the guardian (4)

Marshmallow sat on the arm of the sofa. Laura eyed him.

“What an ugly cat,” she muttered.

The cat got up and stretched, sinking its claws on the upholstery. Then it yawned, showing a mouthful of teeth, small but sharp.

Laura was looking at it warily. She moved a little farther away. “Shoo, cat,” she said. Then she picked up the glass of tomato juice.

Perfect.

The cat snarled. It flattened its ears, shook out its tail so it looked like a huge black brush, and made the fur along its back stand up. Its eyes flashed green fire and its claws were out. Laura thought the cat looked ready to kill. Marshmallow hissed at her for good measure, and took a step closer.

Laura shrieked and jumped up. The juice spilled down the front of her white summer dress. She started screaming for Christine’s father.

Marshmallow sauntered nonchalantly away. The voices followed him.
“PATRICK! Your daughter’s cat hates me!”
“Hates you? That’s absurd!”
Then: “Oh, my God, whatever happened to your clothes?”

Miss Rose met the cat in the front hall on its way out. It looked as if it was grinning.

Christine’s father married Laura soon after. Once her things had been moved to the house, she stopped being nice. One by one, Christine’s mother’s things disappeared. The curtains were replaced. In the living room, there were now metal sculptures where there used to be vases of white roses. The plates were now blue, with matching blue water glasses and blue placemats on the table. To Christine, the worst thing was that the potted plants and ferns disappeared from the house. It was as if Laura was erasing every trace, every bit of her mother from her father’s memory, from the house itself.

And she did not like Christine. When they were alone, she became a little bit mean. Laura was a writer for some fashion magazine, and she did most of her work at home. She squinted at the computer for hours and sipped mug after mug of bitter coffee.

It seemed to Christine that Laura was always waiting for her to do something wrong, to slip, so that she could give her a piece of her mind. Or a little pinch. Or a little slap on the bottom. Of course, it never showed when her father was around. Laura was then very sweet and would often kiss Christine’s hair.

The little pinches, the little slaps, came more often. Now Christine was afraid of Laura. When Christine cried after a slap or a pinch that was a little harder than the one before it, Laura warned her not to tell her father. Or she would hurt Christine for good.

Marshmallow watched everything, and snuggled close to Christine at bedtime.