Cat Nap

         It was a vase, or rather, it had been, not a few moments before.  Then it became a cracked vase, and now it was several sharp fragments of ceramic dusted with a very fine, white powder lying on the garden walk three floors below. 
         When Eve and Richard had entered the room, the room that had once belonged to their mother, they had found their little sister holding the vase in her short, stubby fingers.  They saw the girl, they saw the vase, and then they saw the crack.  It was a hideous black line drawn through the white and gold paint.  Chips of the detail had flaked off, leaving the scar wider in some places. 
         A servant had shouted then, and the girl had screamed back.  And then, everything had seemed to slow as the vase soared in a graceful, shimmering arc between green-gold window drapes.  None of them had seen the vase shatter, but they heard the sound: the sharp, splintering death-cry of the ceramic.
         Richard turned and left.  Eve yawned. 
                                                        ****
         Eve dressed to dine with her brother that afternoon, a thing she had not done, it seemed, since their parents had died, some years ago.  Though the three siblings lived in the same house, they hardly ever saw each other.  It seemed that Richard was always away, busy with one thing or another; he did not know how to handle family matters and financial matters at the same time.  While he was gone, Eve withdrew to her room to write, leaving their sister to run rampant with the servants.  So when Richard invited her to lunch, Eve made the assumption that it must be about this morning's incident with the vase. 
         Eve had a timid way of walking that made one think that she was not there at all.  In fact, her whole presence was rather distant.  So when she entered the room, Richard did not even notice her.  She took a seat across from him, glancing at the brand-new copy of her latest book lying amidst the platters of fruit and bread.  He looked up when she sat down, smiling a little.
         "Good day, Evelyn," he said.
         "Good day."
         He touched the book lightly.  "I liked this one better than the last," he said.  He hoped that this might provoke her to conversation, but Eve was not one for speaking.
         She nodded.
         "Well," he sighed, "I asked you to lunch, so we might as well eat."
         After a while, he spoke again, and her predictions of his purpose proved  true.  "Eve," he said, "it's about our sister."
         She nodded.
         "I thought," he went on, "that you might look after her."
         Eve looked up.  Her eyes widened.  No.  She couldn't spend her days keeping her deviant sister out of trouble.  She had writing to do. 
         The look that passed over Eve's face was enough of an answer.  It was as Richard thought.  She was unable to care about such things.
         "Eve, I'm worried about you," Richard said.  "It's like you're asleep.  Like you're only pretending to live.  Your writing is so emotional, so vivid, but I don't see any emotion in you."
         Eve looked down again, and still said nothing.  There was nothing to say. 
         "Very well," Richard said.  "I'll hire a nurse to rein in Cali.  All she really needs is attention."
                                                    ****
         A mid-day sun shone through the pane glass window of Eve's bedroom, throwing gently swaying shadows onto the carpet to lie there, sentient-like and languid.  Gauzy bed drapes moved in the soft breeze, teasing across tangled blankets.  A book lay open on the sheets, forgotten the night before with the coming of sleep.  Paper cluttered the desk, scattered between boxes of wooden styluses and ceramic jars of various colored inks.  All still as they had been left, late at night, when stars etched patterns on the ceiling and the lamp had been put out. 
         Eve glanced to the window, admiring the view of a feral wood and clear, purple lake that served so often as her muse.  When the sun glinted just right off the surface of the water, marring perfect reflections of the trees, Eve could read her words in the light.  With the coming of evening, she would sit on her window seat, gazing over her labyrinthine paradise, and the words would dash through her thoughts to her hand and straight onto paper. 
         Today, though, as she waited, paper in hand, she felt her thoughts wander places they had not been for many years.  She thought of her brother, of his premature struggles to head a family.  She thought of her sister, ravaging their home.  And she wondered if she herself cared. 
         She opened the window to feel the breeze carry into her room the scent of flora.  Was Richard right?  Was she sleeping?  She breathed in sun-laden summer air.  Pretending to live?  Surely not.  When she wrote, Eve felt more alive than the forest beneath her.  And when she wasn't writing?  Well, she nearly always wrote.  Did she need anything else?  Did she need to care about the broken vase?  Did her love for her sister require her to worry and simper over every misdeed?
         Eve had no answers; all her mind could do was chase her circling questions.  Her mind spiraled from concentration, and Eve had nearly given up on her writing when a knock on her door started her from her thoughts. 
         It was Richard who stood in the hall, returning her gaze, when she regained her balance to answer his summons.  In his arms he held a bundle of very irritable-looking fur.  He held it out to her. 
         “He used to belong to one of my friends.  I thought you might like him,” Richard offered in explanation. 
         She took the menacing little bundle from his hands, nodded in acknowledgment and closed the door. 
                                                      ****
         Eve put the cat down on the floor, hardly noticing its color, and returned to her pen.  Late that night, when the stars sparkled in the curtain lace and Eve was very deeply involved in a train of thought, the cat let out a yowl.  The pen streaked across the page in a direction Eve had not intended, the point tearing an ink-lined gash in the paper.  She looked over her shoulder to the cat sitting on the bed and gave it a glare that her brother would have cowered from.  But all cats know that they are above glares, and so the little beast cried again. 
         To escape the caterwauls, Eve ran to the kitchen and tip-toed back carrying a dish brimming with milk.  The effort earned her the few minutes of peace it took the kitten to bore of the food and jump into her lap, purring.  Eve went to bed. 
         The next morning, a very abrasive tongue drew her from her sleep by the ear.  Eve batted the kitten away, but that merely invited more raucous whining.  Only when she sat up to acknowledge the rascal did he quiet and crawl onto her with typical, cat-like discretion.  Eve stroked him absentmindedly, grinning at the personality that even such an obnoxious animal can show. 
         The cat adapted to life in Eve's room, even as Eve adapted to life with a cat.  He distracted her and scattered her papers, and in turn, she lay with him in the squares of sunlight on her carpet and let him curl up with her when she slept.  She discovered, as the days passed, that more and more objects in her writing were being compared to cats. 
                                                      ****
         Eve sat on her window seat, contemplating, watching the feline grace of her new companion as the cat played in and out of the shadows cast by her bed drapes.  Her writing over the past weeks had no longer been hindered by thoughts of her brother.  On the contrary, she felt that her writing had taken a definite turn for the better.  The plot had taken a twist that she admitted she had not expected, but she liked the story all the better for it. 
         Richard had spoken to her a second time last evening, asking her to attend a party with him.  A party!  The last party Eve could remember, and not at all fondly, was the one her mother had thrown her father for his fortieth birthday.  Needless to say Eve had not enjoyed herself. 
         Again, Richard had brought up the word 'sleeping.'  He had asked her if she liked the cat he had brought her.  She said that she did.  He asked her if she would come to the party.  She said she would not.  He asked, “If you are able to love that cat, why can you not love your own family?”  It was then that he said, “It just seems as though you're sleeping, Eve.” 
         So Eve watched her cat tonight, and again she wondered.  Perhaps he was right.  She could show her affection to this cat, but she could not worry over her rampant sister and a shattered antique.  Besides, Richard was her brother, and older than she was.  Why could she not trust his judgment?  If he thought that she was doing harm to herself by staying locked in her room, then it must be true.  Who was she, with her beloved little kitten, to say otherwise?
                                                        ****
         Richard had noted that he seemed to be seeing more of Eve than ever, even if it was only on her trips to and from the kitchen for milk.  Even so, he was amazed when she breezed down the stairs one day, the cat in her arms, and announced that she was going out.
         "Out?" he asked.
         "Out," Eve confirmed happily.  "Rascal has decided that milk is just not sufficient any longer."
         A cold dread passed over Richard.  "Did..." he started falteringly, then cleared his throat.  "Did 'Rascal' tell you this?"
         Eve laughed.  "Rascal is a cat, Richard.  Or did you think that I'd finally gone insane.  Come, my book wasn't that bad, was it?"
         Relieved, Richard assured her that it wasn't and held the door for her to exit.
         On her way past, Eve paused and asked, “That party...  when is it?”
         “Tomorrow eve.  At nightfall.  I thought you didn't want...”
         Eve hesitated, then, in a single breath, said, “I would love to come with you.”
         And with that she swept out the door, leaving him to shake his head in wonder at her back.  That party would begin her resurrection, her waking life.  She nodded, resolved, as she lifted the latch on the garden gate.  She closed the gate and, finding herself again facing her brother's house, she stood for a moment, a hand resting on the cold iron, and looked up at Richard's silhouette in his bedroom window.