Free Sea Lovers by Valerie Martin Page B

the corpse.
    When she went inside, she found Nell stretched out on her bed with her favorite comic books arranged all about her.
    “There’s a dead cat in the yard,” Anne said.
    The child looked up. “There is?”
    “He got his face stuck in a salmon can.”
    Nell sat up and strained to look out the window.
    “You can’t see him from here. He’s in the corner. I don’t think you want to see him.”
    “I want to see him,” she said, getting out of bed. “Where is he? Come show me.”
    “Put your robe on, put your slippers on,” Anne said. “It’s freezing out there.”
    Nell pulled on her slippers, hurriedly wrapped herself in her robe, and went to the door. Anne followed her disconsolately. They went out and stood side by side, looking down at the dead cat.
    “What a way to go,” Anne remarked.
    Nell was quiet a moment; then she said in a voice filled with pity, “Mama, can’t you take that can off his face?”
    Anne hesitated. She was not anxious to see the expression such a death might leave on its victim’s face. But she understood the justice of the request. She grasped the can, thinking it would fall away easily, but instead she found she had lifted the animal’s head and shoulders from the concrete. The stiffness that was communicated to her fingertips shocked her; it was like lifting a board, and she laid the can back down gingerly. “It’s stuck,” she said. “It won’t come off.”
    They stood quietly a few moments more. “Should we bury him?” Nell asked.
    “No. Dogs would come and dig him up.”
    “What can we do, then?”
    “I’ll call the city. They have a special number. They’ll come pick him up.”
    “The city?” the child said.
    “Well, the Sanitation Department.”
    They went inside. “That’s like the garbage men,” the child observed. “You’re not going to put him in the garbage can?”
    “No. I’ll put him in a plastic bag.”
    Nell considered this. “That will be good,” she said. “Then some baby won’t come along and see him and be upset.”
    Later Anne called the Sanitation Department. The man she spoke with was courteous. “Just get it to the curb,” he said, “and I’ll have someone pick it up. But he won’t be there till this afternoon.” He paused, consulting a schedule Anne imagined. “He won’t be there until after three.”
    Anne appreciated the man’s precision, and as it was still drizzling, she left the cat where he was until afternoon. Nell would be off visiting her father. Anne wanted to spare her the sight of the impersonal bagging of the creature, though she had noticed with some satisfaction that the child was neither squeamish nor overimaginative when it came to death. She understood it already as in the nature of things.
    At noon the rain stopped and the sun appeared, but it was still bitterly cold and windy. Anne drove her daughter to her ex-husband’s and stayed to fill in the parts of the dead cat story that the child neglected. It was hard not to make a joke of the absurdity of the accident. Even Nell saw the humor of it when her father observed that the salmon can would become a new object for dread and suicide threats.
    “I can’t take it anymore,” Anne suggested. “I’m going to get the salmon can.”
    They laughed over it and then she went home. She didn’t take off her coat and stopped only in the kitchen to pick up a plastic trash bag. She proceeded directly to the patio. Now when she opened the door there was no shock in the sight. She went straight to the body as if it had beckoned her.
    She knelt down beside the cat. The pavement nearby was dry—the sun had taken care of that—but a ring of moisture like a shadow outlined the corpse. She slipped the bag over the animal’s back feet and carefully, without touching him, pulled it up to his hips. But there it stuck, and she knew that she would have to lift him to get him into the bag.
    She had a sensation of repugnance mixed with confidence. It wouldn’t