The Church of the Final Goodbye Senior Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the School of Arts and Sciences Brandeis University Undergraduate Program in Creative Writing Stephen McCauley, Advisor In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts by Gwenyth Fraser May 2017 Copyright by Gwenyth Fraser How to Kill a Cat I “Well, it’s got a collar on. Maybe we can call its owner,” Trent said. To my ears, it sounded like expert case-cracking from Sherlock Holmes himself. “You’re right,” I said. “You’re so right.” Trent Beaulieu and I had been working together as counselors at Camp K.V. for exactly twenty days now. This was also how long I’d been in love with him. “Welcome to camp,” he had said that first day- to all the new trainees, but looking directly into my own eyes. “We’re so glad to have you here.” He was handsome. Tall. Even his braces looked good. And no one could play a better game of kickball in the upper field during Free Time. Today he was taking charge of the situation once again, like the hero I knew him to be. “Who wants to check the tag?” he asked the crowd. “See if it has a phone number on it?” I saw an obvious opportunity to get his attention. “Oh, I’ll do it!” I squealed. “I love cats!” I fixed my hair, smoothed my skort, and bent down to inspect the creature in front of us. It was cute, a tabby of some sort, with speckled fur and three different colors on the face. Unluckily, it was also dead. The waterfront at Camp K.V. was a veritable goldmine for such finds. It had something to do with the flow of water currents in the surrounding lakes. I didn’t really understand the particulars, but the long and short of it was that all the debris floating in the nearby waters made its way here and was dumped in our little buoyed gulf. The kids were always finding something interesting as they swam. Sometimes it was a mere water bottle, or an old waterlogged watch. But most days there was an exciting discovery just itching to be stepped on by one of our tiny swimmers. An injured crab, perhaps, or a water snake. Once, a dead turtle without a shell had washed up on our little beach (it looked remarkably like the cat in front of us now). A few weeks ago there had been The Great Floating Mystery of Camp K.V. As usual, it had started with screams from the camper adventurous enough to have the first sighting. Soon, kids were flocked around the object (except the little girl who had spotted it: she fled to the shore and started to cry). But it was floating outside of the buoy line, which meant the kids weren’t allowed to swim to it. The Camp Director, an overweight man with unfortunate hair patterns, had been called down to fetch it in. He grabbed one of those nets designed for cleaning pools, and tried to scoop the mystery object toward the docks. It was much heavier than he anticipated. He almost fell in on top of it before a few of the lifeguards grabbed on and stabilized him. Soon, their haul had been dumped in the sand for closer inspection. It was like a fat, hairless dog. Except different, in that its head and limbs had been cut off. What could it be? was the talk of the camp all week. At lunch, in the lean-tos, and throughout the main lodge all anyone could talk about was What was it? Where had it come from? What does it mean? That was when Trent Beaulieu had asked to make a small speech during the weekly variety show. He stood up, cleared his throat. “It’s a pig roast,” he said. “There’s a restaurant a ways upstream. I’ll bet they started preparing the pig, realized the meat was no good, and tossed it out for the fish to eat.” The audience had roared with applause. Today’s was a similar case, except that the cat had made it all the way to the sandy beach before it was spotted. This meant it must have floated in overnight, and was discovered when camp started the next morning. We didn’t think it had drowned. It appeared to have been badly injured before it wound up in the water, as its midsection was something of a mess. “There’s no number for a home phone,” I reported back to Trent. “But there’s a phone number for the veterinary clinic it used to go to.” Trent nodded his head wisely. “That’s a lead.” Another counselor ran to the payphone and called, and before long we had an address for the place. It was agreed that Trent and I would go together, once the Camp Director had bagged up the cat’s body. He wrote out directions, handed me one of the camp cell phones in case anything went wrong, and then gave Trent keys to the K.V. jeep. I wasn’t old enough to drive. I couldn’t focus as I sat next to him in the car. My palms were sweating. Should I turn on the radio? Did this count as a date? It was quiet, and I wasn’t sure whether I should ask a question, or tell a joke, maybe, but before I could think of anything clever he turned on the music and then I wasn’t sure if maybe we should talk about the song that was playing. Luckily, before I knew it we were turning into the parking lot at the Kennebec Valley Animal Clinic. Trent got out and started walking around the car. For a moment, I thought he might open the door for me, but it turns out he was just grabbing the bag with the cat. We said hello to the woman at the counter. She looked quite alarmed when we told her we’d brought a dead cat. We explained (very reasonably, I thought) where it had come from and why we brought it to her. Trent had to fill out a bunch of paperwork. On our way out, I grabbed a handful of lollipops from a dish by the door and offered him the root beer flavored one. He declined, but I assume this was because he needed both hands for driving. II Yesterday I killed my girlfriend’s cat. “Dinner at my place,” she had said, and I consented, forgetting in the spur of the moment that meeting her family was not part of my original plan for the prom. I wanted to dance with a good-looking girl, show her off to my modest friend circle, and maybe see some action in the back of my ’98 Ford Focus. But I agreed anyway, and found myself at her house on the night of the dance. I parked my car in front of her two-door garage, her white picket fence, her two-and- a-half-children perfect American family. Dinner was spaghetti and a salad that her mother had prepared. It exceeded expectations: the salad had bits of some citrus fruit mixed in, and the spaghetti was home-cooked. We ate off china that was decorated with a tasteful floral pattern. I had no trouble with the parent-friendly banter. Said all my thank you’s, my please’s, even complimented the room decor (“What a lovely painting, is there an artist in the family?”). And as soon as it was acceptable to do so, I excused myself from the meal and went to start the car so that my date wouldn’t freeze in her dress. I decided to turn the vehicle around so that I could make a clean getaway once she was ready to go. I turned down my music to a respectable volume, turned up the heat, shifted into reverse, released the brake, felt my wheels glide over a small bump. I parked the car. It was only when I was out of the vehicle and walking back toward the door to the house that I saw my fatal error, the little pile of something hairy between my front and back left tires. I muttered a string of expletives, and shuffled over for a closer look. A cat, I thought to myself, Oh, shit. I had seen enough cats in my day to recognize the horrible mess as such a creature, though their backs did not usually have such a deep, flat valley and typically all of their insides remained inside. I felt a little sick at the sight of it. And my next thought was, They’re gonna kill me. My eyes darted to the door. She wasn’t there yet, and no one else was watching. No one had seen its demise. Quickly, I popped open the trunk to look for a blanket, or a tarp to scoop up the flattened feline, but there was no such luck. I grabbed my schoolbag instead, dumped its contents into the trunk, and replaced them with the cat. A bit of him got on my sleeve in the process. But he fit in the bag and he didn’t stink yet. When I got inside I placed my coat on the counter (next to a food bowl which could only have belonged to the poor flat creature in the trunk of my car) and excused myself to the restroom.