The record would not stop skipping. Eliza changed the song first, then tried changing the vinyl. She’d tried both sides of three others, and every one of them skipped, skipped, skipped! She slammed the case closed.
The quiet was unbearable.
She tried the radio, but it played static on every station. She shut it off and stood in the silence. Even the birds outside were quiet, but there was the softest rustle of leaves in the garden. Faint as it was, nothing could be worse than the horrible silence. Eliza pulled on a hat and stormed out of the silent house.
She took a seat in the garden beneath a shady tree and listened for any sounds. The leaves rustled in the gentle breeze, but it was not enough to make it hard to think or hard to recall the last time she’d been in that spot.
Eliza started as a shape emerged suddenly from the brush. Fear gripped her for a moment before she could make out what it was: the ugly old tomcat. Eliza’s nose crinkled as she took him in. He was big and ugly with thick, filthy, matted fur, a pinkish scar over one of his leering green eyes, and crooked whiskers. Each of his traits told of alley fights he either won or narrowly escaped. She’d seen him milling around the house now and again for the past few months, but even on the days she didn’t see him, she knew he’d been around. Friends relayed stories of their cats leaving them little gifts–dead or nearly dead animals. This creature was absolutely not her pet, but he still partook in the practice of gift-giving. They felt less like gifts and more like threats.
“What do you want?” Eliza said to him, just so she could hear someone say something. He padded over to her seat, and she pulled her legs up onto the chair. The skirt of her long, dark dress bunched up under her feet. She was about to yell at him to get back when he stopped and sat before her. His tail wrapped itself around his feet as he made himself comfortable, looked up at her, and meowed. What a horrible sound! She might have preferred the quiet.
“Well, meow to you, too,” she said, turning up her nose at him.
“Shouldn’t you be weeping?”
Her brow crinkled, and she turned her head down to look at the tom again. He had his head cocked to the side a little, awaiting an answer. She wondered if maybe she’d finally reached her breaking point. “Meow,” she attempted, hoping to remind him of what he was supposed to sound like. “Me-ow.”
He meowed again. Much better.
“You look quite unaffected for a widow.” This time, she saw his little cat mouth move and watched the words slide out between pointed, yellow teeth.
“How do you know I’m a widow?” The cat just offered a large, knowing smile. “I don’t care for your company,” she said, wrapping her arms around her knees.
“Should I be worried?” he purred.
“And what does that mean?” she snapped back and narrowed her eyes on him. If a cat could shrug, he might have, but a twitch of his ears sufficed.
“Well, anyway, that isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said, standing and flicking his tail this way and that. “I was wondering if you’ve seen a bird around here. She and I have an engagement.” The grin returned, this time with a bloodthirsty glint in his one good eye.
“Even if I saw a bird, I wouldn’t tell you about it!” She sat up straight, so her legs were over the edge of the chair again. “Now get out of here!” She stamped the ground, her skirts swishing in the grass. “Shoo!”
His pupils narrowed, and he hissed and ran back into the bushes without another word.
Another few moments of silence passed while Eliza tried to collect her thoughts. Surely she imagined that. It was just a reaction to the grief and stress. His voice had been so familiar, one that had been in her ear for years. Now there was silence there, glorious silence.
“Thank you,” crooned a voice from above. For a moment, she fought the urge, but it didn’t last long; Eliza tipped her head back to look for the source of the voice. In the tree, just above her, a little blackbird hopped from branch to branch. “Thank you for not telling him where I am.”
“I didn’t know you were there,” she admitted sheepishly.
“That’s okay,” she said and flitted down to land on the arm of her seat. “I know you wouldn’t have told him. It’s our secret.”
“What is?”
“That I was in the tree the whole time.”
“Oh,” she chewed her lip, glancing into the brush. She worried the cat would pounce out right then. “Are you in that tree often?”
The blackbird gave her best attempt at a nod, but the bobbing motion was so birdlike that it was hard to say if it was an answer or not.
“Yes, all the time. It’s a good hiding spot from him.”
“It can’t be that good; it’s in his garden.”
“Your garden,” she chirped, “you’re the one that tends to it.”
“That’s true,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “If you are here often, you must have seen what happened the other night.”
Again, the blackbird nodded her little head. “I did… it was a terrible accident.”
Accident. The word hung in the air between the two of them for a few long moments before Eliza spoke again at last. “Right. Dreadful.”
“Do you think he will come back?” the bird asked, watching the bushes. Eliza’s stomach turned as she considered the question until the blackbird added quickly, “The cat?”
“I hope not,” the woman answered, leaning back in her chair.
“Me too,” the bird agreed. She flew back into her tree and began chirping the way a proper bird should.
Eliza listened to her singing. This was her garden, and for once it felt like it. She waited awhile just to make sure the cat didn’t come back, and only when the sun began to dip beneath the horizon and the bird had long since stopped singing, she returned to the house.
Maybe she’d see about getting a trap for the tom.