Tickle Monster

I plopped the heavy tray down on the tables so hard the Panera sandwiches jumped. I began to turn around and then froze realizing what would be behind that flimsy divider. I could not stand it; I was not ready to see my grandfather anywhere besides his rocking chair in Michigan. I bolted, back through the kitchenette, past the storage closet, and to the parking lot. A cold breeze tussled the air and the generators blocked out any sound. I sank down the bricks to the ground and took a breath that came out as a half hiccup, my teeth brushing my bottom lip. The funeral director walked by and I panicked, not wanting to explain my situation. I had already heard to many pathetic condolences. He had probably seen this before and wisely ignored me. I struggled to my feet before any one else could come out. My eyes would remain abnormally puffy and red for the rest of the day.

I took another hiccup of a breath and stepped into the funeral parlor. I walked over to a tapestry and stared at it so intently you’d think I ‘d be counting the stitches. Finally, I tore my eyes away and focused them to the coffin at the end of the room. I walked over. When a person is out of things to say to the family they will often comment on how natural the person looks. Grandpa didn’t look natural. He was a mirror image of the way they’d done my grandpa Culver. A moth creased in a frown on a pasty white face. When my grandpa Culver had died I had tried to memorize that face but today I would not waste my memory that was not the face grandpa Reichal would wear in my memory. I wanted to reach down and pull his mouth into a smile as it always had been.

The announcement had come two days ago. I had come home, mind wandering, blabbering excitedly about school. It had seemed so strange that mom was leaning against the counter while I ate my snack; she was typically always caught up in something or another.

“Fiona,” Mom took a shuddering breath and I was immediately alert by my mom’s tone, “Grandpa, this morning…”

“No!” I thought.

Mom caught me in her arms and I cried numbly into her shoulder. Grandpa had always had Parkinson but to me that simply meant his 71/2 fingers (1/2 lost to the saw) vibrated slightly, but suddenly in the past year it had come to mean so much more. Last Christmas. My mom and aunt had worked so hard to replicate the Christmases they’d spent in Michigan as kids fearing for the worst. The worst? The thought had scared me then, pecking at me while I ignored it, pretending I’d never thought of it. The worst? Now it had slapped me to the ground.

I’m not sure how long we stayed in that position, the sink biting into my side, keeping me alert. Fifteen minutes and mom’s sweater was soaked. I starred hard at the Christmas gift I had made for mom back in preschool, a Popsicle stick snowflake with tiny pictures at each point. To a normal viewer the pictures would look like marker ink in a variety of colors having bled horizontally along the ridges of the wood. I saw an apple, a Ferris wheel, and mom and I in floats in Michigan. In my mind the floats came alive, the laughing, water lapping the side of the boat and Grandpa, whose smile is too wide to fit on his face, lifts me onto his lap in the captain’s seat. “Watch out for the yellow line,” is his only advice.

Grandpa was moved to a nursing home in the spring. Gwen began to fold paper cranes and we strung them in his window, but we never got to one thousand. If grandpa was responsive we could talk to him and drive him around town. But each time we said good-by we said it knowing it could be our last. The smell of his Benyol was over powering as I leaned over to give him a hug. He kissed my fingers for the last time. It was his eighty fifth birthday.

My uncle walked over to the coffin. A man I’d always seen as so strong had tears in his eyes as he leaned over to say goodbye to his father.

When the service begins my mom gets up to say something and she barely can she is crying. I walk up I try not to cry. Instead I share a memory in which I’m laughing in wheezing, gasping breaths as I did when I was five and the Tickle Monster (Grandpa) caught me. Grandpa was ready when Gwen or I got too close to his chair. He would reach out and snag us sending what ever we were holding flying into the air. But we never avoided that chair in fact; we went out of our way to strut past giggling our heads off. We were happy only when we were shrieking with laughter. I decide to remember Grandpa as the caring one who spent the night in the car when he found Gwen and I sleeping in a tent we’d built under his chair.

Angel

“Grandma look.”

She was sitting outside on the patio. Her little feet were tucked in close to her body and her tail was swishing back and forth.

“What Caitlin?” Grandma was in the kitchen cooking chili and pie.

“That Grandma, that,” I jabbed my finger at the glass of the sliding door.

Grandma set down her knife and walked over. She peered out the door and said,” Oh that’s Mrs. Nibs, the neighbor’s cat”

I pressed my face against the glass,” She’s pretty”

Grandma walked back out to the kitchen and began to slice open the pie,” yes she’s very pretty, Mary Lou has another one, Angel I think she’s called.”

I walked out to the kitchen and stuck my finger into the whip cream and popped it into my mouth. “Grandma can I pet her?”

“Sure Caitlin” Grandma walked out to the hallway and pulled my coat from the coat hanger in the closet and came back.

Once I was buttoned up, Grandma said, “Be back when you see Mom and Grandpa pull up from the gym.”

I nodded then ran to the hallway and pulled my boots on then I grabbed the door handle and ran out. My boots crunched in the snow as I ran along side the house. I skidded to a halt once I reached the patio.

Mrs. Nibs looked at me and mewed softly.

I walked up to her and slowly petted her on her head, and when she began to purr I scratched her behind he ears. I was petting her some more but tapping caught my attention and I stopped.

I looked over at the house but Grandma was busy with the chili.

Tap, tap, tap.

I looked over at the neighbor’s house and saw a lady standing at the sliding door. She was wearing a blue flowered nightgown with pink fuzzy slippers. She had gray curly hair that exploded everywhere.

It was Mary Lou!

She opened the sliding door and called out my name.

I knocked on our sliding door and when Grandma looked up from the chili, I pointed over to Mary Lou’s house. Grandma nodded and I ran over to Mary Lou’s house. I ran up her deck and knocked on her screen door. She set down her cup of tea on the island in the kitchen and pulled the door open.

“Come in, come in,” she said leading me to the living room. I took off my jacket and set it down on the armrest of her flower designed sofa.

“Would you like something? Maybe, hot chocolate or coffee?” she asked me once I sat down.

“Um, can I please have hot chocolate?”

“Sure, but you don’t like coffee?”

“I’m only seven”

“Oh” She nodded and smiled and walked out the room. She came back five minutes later and handed me a cup of hot chocolate and sat down in the single sofa in front of me.

“So, you like cats?”

” Yeah, I love them. Your cat’s really cute,” I sipped up a marshmallow in my glass and swallowed it. It burned on the way down.

“Really. Well, Mrs. Nibs is a sweetie. She loves everyone. I have another cat, too. Her names Angel but she only stays indoors because she and Mrs. Nibs don’t get along. That’s why I have to give her away, I can only keep one and I love Mrs. Nibs to death. I’m not going to be doing it for the money though, that just doesn’t seem right to the cat.”

“Oh. Do you now who will be taking her?” I took another drink of hot chocolate.

“Oh, no I have just decided to give her away on Sunday. But she’s a sweet cat once you get to know her, even sweeter than Mrs. Nibs. Would you like to pet her?”Mary Lou looked at me. “She might hiss at you but she won’t bite.”

“Sure.” I set my hot chocolate down on her doily covered TV table. Then I followed her into a bedroom. I walked quietly into the room and heard Mary Lou shut the door.

“She is underneath the bed.” It was a tiny whisper.

I slowly crouched down beside the bed on my knees and lifted up the sheets. It was like looking into an animals cave. It was all dark and I was barely able to deceiver anything for what it was. But there hidden beside the shoe boxes and hat boxes was a pair of eyes.

One green, one yellow.

I could barely make out a short, plump body with white fur and black spots.

She just sat there, her little feet tucked in close to her body and her tail curled around her. She slowly looked up and blinked at the light invading her darkness. She looked kind of cute.

I reached out to her slowly, my fingers stretching out to touch her fur.

But in return all I got was a hiss. Then she retreated back into her darkness.

I tried again but stopped when I heard the honk of a car horn. Only my grandpa would honk.

“Mom, can we get a cat?” I placed a spoonful of chili into my mouth and swallowed.

“Why would you want a cat?” my mom asked.

“Because it will be a good companion and will be sweet.”

“Having a cat is a big responsibility and it costs money.” My mom poured cheese into her bowl.

“I could do it and it would be free”

My mom looked at me “What do you mean?”

“Mary Lou is getting rid of Angel for free.”

“She is?,” asked my grandpa “how do you know?”

“She told me when I went over to her house, so can we mom?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Is this her?” My mom crouched on the floor.

“Yes. She’s a good cat and doesn’t have any problems,” said Mary Lou

“How old is she?” My mom asked.

“Five, I believe”

My mom softly grabbed Angel from under the bed and wrapped her in her arms. She started to pet her and Angel began to purr. Then, my mom started to rock back and forth like she did to me when I was a baby. “She’s adorable, a little fat though.” I looked over at my mom with hope shining my eyes. She nodded. Words could not express all the joy I had at having a new friend.

Angel really influenced me. She influenced me to be happy for the things I have because I might not always have them. Angel really means a lot to me and my family, and one day I might not have her in my life. She could be with another family or just be gone. It would effect my deeply if she were to leave, no one can replace her sweetness or her ability to make anyone smile when they are feeling down or sad. I have to give Angel love and attention that any good animal deserves because in the future she won’t always be there curled beside my while I sleep, her fat, little body resting beside mine and her head in my arms.