When they pulled out of the parking lot toward the first gym, Rudy resumed singing, and she wondered if her father’s driving would suffer if he simply listened to the radio or drove in silence. Just before reaching the first gym’s parking lot, Rudy stopped.
“When I was your age, you were alive for two whole years,” he said, seriously.
“You told me a hundred times already,” she said.
“Listen, kiddo, maybe you need a husband and a kid, not a cat,” he said. “It’s perspective.”
Her mother had died the day she was born, and Alice often wondered if Rudy wouldn’t have busied himself in endless work if she lived.
“That might mean I’d be too busy to be in this seat right now.”
Her father laughed. “A husband would outlast a cat,” he said. “So would a kid.”
Bella had only expected to be fed and loved. Nothing else. No school tuition, music lessons, clothes, sleepless nights, or all the other necessities related to a kid. Alice’s window had not yet closed, but she couldn’t seem to land a committed man and had no interest in the arduous task of single parenting like Rudy. Now the cat who’d stayed by her side through nineteen years—multiple promotions, boyfriends, apartments, and a house—was gone. The vet had informed her months earlier that Bella had cancer, but it still shocked her when the kitty began to drool. She’d attributed Bella’s weight loss to age. She’d expected the vet to prescribe some medicine to control the drooling, but instead, he showed Alice a bloody tumor in the feline’s mouth, saying, she’s nineteen, and it’s time to let her go. Alice wept uncontrollably as the vet inserted three needles into the cat’s front paws. She’d held the soft, black, furry body close until Bella had stopped breathing. Recriminations and guilt for all the ways she’d failed Bella overwhelmed her, and a gauzy blanket of grief enveloped her as she left the vet’s office zombie-like with Bella’s empty carrier in hand.
“You’re going to outlive every animal you get,” he said.
She shrugged. He thrust his bearded chin forward and scrunched his brows, his expression of contemplation.