Free Sea Lovers by Valerie Martin Page A

blown free now.
    She looked at the clock as she went back to bed. It was 3:00 a.m. She curled down under the blankets and pulled her pillow down next to her. It was a bad habit, she thought, clutching this pillow like the mate she didn’t have. She thought of Aaron.
    Clink. Clink, clink.
    It was nothing, she thought. Some trash caught in a bush. She would throw it away in the morning. Now it was important not to think, not about the sound and not about the party, or her foolish infatuation, or the engaging smile of a young man who cared nothing for her. These things didn’t bear thinking upon. It didn’t matter, she told herself, and she knew why it didn’t matter, but somehow, as she lay in the darkness, her consciousness drifting into the less palpable darkness of sleep, she couldn’t remember why it didn’t matter. Exactly why.
    Clink. Clink, clink.
    She woke up several times that night. Each time she heard the sound, but she would not listen to it. Later she would recall that though it was a small, innocuous sound, there had been in it something so disturbing she had shuddered each time she woke and realized that, whatever it was, it was still going on.
    Eventually she woke and it was morning. Her daughter stood next to the bed, looking down at her anxiously.
    “It’s too early,” Anne complained.
    “It’s cold in my room. Can I get in bed with you?”
    Anne pushed back against the wall and motioned the child in under the blankets.
    Clink. Clink, clink.
    Nell put her arms about her mother’s neck. “It’s warm in here,” she said, curling down gratefully.
    “Go to sleep,” Anne replied. They fell asleep.
    An hour later, when Anne woke and understood that she was awake for the day, she found herself straining to hear the sound. It had stopped. She didn’t think of it again, not while she made pancakes for Nell, nor when she browsed leisurely through the morning paper, nor when she stood amid a week’s worth of laundry, sorting the colors and textures for the machine. She collected a pile of clothes in her arms and balanced the soap box on top. Opening the back door to get to the laundry room was always a problem. She worked one hand free beneath the clothes and turned the knob. The door was opened but it had cost her two socks and an undershirt, which lay in the doorway at her feet. Bending down to get them would only mean losing more. Leaving the door open would let the heat out. She bent her knees, reaching down without bending over, like an airline attendant in bad weather. She retrieved the strayed garments, but the soap powder took the opportunity to fall open, and a thin stream of white fell where the socks had been. “Shit,” she said, stepping out onto the patio. In that moment she saw the dead cat.
    His body lay in the corner of the patio. In her first glance she knew so much about him, so much about his death, that she closed her eyes as if she could close out what she knew. He lay on his side, his legs stretched out unnaturally. His fur was wet and covered with bits of leaves and dirt. She couldn’t see his face, for it was hidden by a tin can, a one-pound salmon can. Anne remembered having thrown it away a few days earlier. The can completely covered the animal’s face, and even from a distance she could see that it was wedged on tightly.
    “Oh, Jesus,” she said. “Oh, Christ.”
    Anne put the laundry in the washing machine and went back to the yard for a close look. She crouched over the dead animal, pulling her sweater in tightly against the cold. He was a large cat; his fur was white with patches of gray and black. Anne recognized him as one of several neighborhood cats. Someone might feed him regularly and might look for him; she had no way of knowing. The can over his face made him look ludicrous. It would have been funny had she not listened for so many hours to his struggles to free himself. If I’d gone out, she thought, I could have pulled it off. Now she had to deal with