In a Green Space

June packs all her belongings into her dad’s truck on a white-hot Sunday in July and moves into a small three-bedroom apartment with two men who she found on Craigslist. “We got a cat. You allergic?” one of the men—Eddie?—asks.

Her dad looks around the apartment and notices a bong with dirty water on the edge of the windowsill, the open takeout boxes of spaghetti on the counter, and the intricate fishing hooks and lures littering the dining table. “They fish a lot,” she explains. She moves in front of the window to block the bong.

“They should do something with that food. They’ll get mice.” He startles when a cat jumps onto the counter. It looks at June’s dad and makes wet little noises as it eats spaghetti. 

June says, “Cats eat mice,” and her dad makes a face. She pulls her father’s hand toward the door. “Let’s grab dinner. My treat.” 

They settle on the same Italian place as the takeout boxes of spaghetti—Luigi’s Pizza. It, and a Chinese place, and a Starbucks are the only restaurants in town. Luigi’s has a menu that takes up five pages and includes dishes like shrimp and grits, fried cauliflower, and seafood soup. They order clam linguini and salad. June drinks Chardonnay and her father orders a Sam Adams with a glass for pouring. They cut pasta into little ribbons and fold the lettuce before forking salad into their mouths. 

When it is time to say goodbye, June’s dad says, “I don’t know about this, Junebug.” He puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes. “This job, this move. It’s not right for you.”

“It’s a little late for that, Dad.” June smiles, gives her father a hug, and promises to call if she needs anything. He shakes his head before climbing into the truck. For a moment, she wants to call him back, repack her stuff into the truck bed. She considers going into the apartment, facing the two men whose names she still doesn’t know. But then what—she goes to the corporate job he has all lined up for her? She lives with him forever, stays his little girl? God, it makes her queasy thinking about it.

She waves goodbye from the front door as he backs out of the apartment’s parking lot. The truck’s headlights glare in the twilight, and then he is gone. 

Over the next month, June learns the hobbies—and names—of her two roommates. Eric works at a canoe rental place where he shuttles people back and forth at different points along the river. He owns a kayak which lies mossy and dripping with creek water against the west wall of the apartment building. She finds a folded letter stuck into the crack of the front door one day after work. In it are the words “fees,” “kayak,” and “misuse of public space.” She starts to ask Eric about it, but he snatches the letter from her hands and slams open the front door. The fees and the kayak disappear the next day. 

Owen owns the bong. He grows three marijuana plants in the abandoned lot next to the apartment building. A few weeks after she moves in, he brings June to the concrete lot, where pots sit squat and heavy with soil. He points to two of the shorter plants. “Indica,” he explains. The leaves are thick and fingered and remind June a little of strawberry plants. He touches the taller plant, its leaves creeping halfway up the brick wall. “This is Sativa,” he says. “It’s a bitch to grow and takes forever to flower. But the high is balmy.” 

Dirty, her father would say. June likes the earthy scent of the leaves. She presses her hand to the brick and feels the warm seep of the sun-heated wall. It’s exciting, she thinks, that something so green can grow in a space filled with broken pavement and crushed gravel. 

One evening after a difficult day at work, June eats dinner at the dining table and cuts her finger on a fishing hook when she tries to make space for her plate. “Oh.” She watches a pearl of blood fatten then fall down her thumb. 

June rinses her finger at the kitchen sink. 

Soap, you idiot, she hears her father’s voice say.

“Alright, alright,” June says aloud and tries to pump soap but finds it empty. She throws it away and digs under the sink for a new bottle. She sticks her thumb in her mouth and sucks. There isn’t any soap under the sink, nor in the bathroom, nor in the hall closet where toiletries are kept. 

“Shoot,” she says, the tang of blood slick on her tongue. She finds a band-aid and antibiotic cream in the medicine cabinet. She runs her thumb under water again, dollops cream on the cut, and winds the band-aid tightly around her finger. 

When she returns to dinner, the cat is sitting on the table with a French fry in its mouth. She shoves it off the table, and it hisses before running into Eric’s bedroom. June dumps the French fries into the garbage and inspects her hamburger carefully. 

The fish hooks are out of control, and only filthy people don’t have soap. You need to tell them to clean up their acts. Buckle up, Junebug, and tell them!

June eats dinner alone and waits for Owen and Eric to return home. She reminds herself that this is what independence tastes like, sounds like. Feels like. 

At midnight, she startles awake to heavy, uneven footsteps and the gravel of Eric’s voice as he stoops to pet the cat. “Pussy,” he says and giggles. He falls into bed that night without taking his clothes off. 

In the morning, June stands at the kitchen sink while Eric showers. Steam pours out of the bathroom when he is finished. He has wrapped a towel around his waist, and she notices the deep V of his pelvic muscles. Her eyes jump quickly to a potted fern in the corner of the kitchen, the one the cat pees in occasionally. He whistles as he saunters from the bathroom to his bedroom.

“Eric? I just wanted to ask you,” she begins to say. He stops whistling and turns. His hand slips to the edge of the towel and holds it in place. She blushes. “I was wondering why we’re out of hand soap?” 

Wrong, all wrong. My god, quit looking at the towel.

He shrugs and starts to turn away. “I don’t know. I think Owen usually takes care of that stuff.” 

“Oh, one more thing.” His shoulders fall impatiently. “I cut my finger on your fishing hooks last night. I was trying to make room for a plate and when I moved them—” She holds up her bandaged thumb. “Could you please move them somewhere else?” 

He looks at June’s finger and moves toward the dining table. Inspecting the tangled mess of fish hooks, his head snaps to June. “Do you know how much this stuff costs?”

June shakes her head. 

“Any dumb ass thinks if he has a pole, he knows how to fish. People don’t know anything. It’s expensive if you do it right.” He bends further over the table and tries to untangle some of the hooks. June worries the towel might fall off. “Please don’t touch my stuff again. If you have a problem with it, eat somewhere else and tell me about it later.” 

The bedroom door slams behind him.

The next day, June notices that Eric, who has left to kayak all morning, has arranged the fishing equipment across the kitchen counter this time. The hooks lie in two rows, organized from the tiniest j-shaped hook to a wicked three-barbed one that is as wide as her palm. She touches a lure that looks like an earthworm and shivers at its cold flesh. 

The coffee pot sits behind the rows of fishing equipment. She carefully scoots the machine away and scoops coffee into it. She has an overwhelming urge to sweep the hooks and lures onto the floor. She clenches her teeth and heads to the bathroom to shower. 

He listened to you, didn’t he? June shampoos her hair, lets the water heat enough that it burns the space between her shoulder blades. You should have been more specific. 

June makes a mental note to speak with Eric again as she shuts off the water and reaches for a towel. Her hand pauses in midair, though, and she cocks her ear toward the bathroom door. A high-pitched whine—no, a scream? A shriek?—grows louder on the other side of the door. The sound tapers then builds again like steam in a kettle. She can hear something thud into the walls.

Burglar. Rapist. Murderer. Do you have a weapon? 

June’s skin prickles. She waits and listens. Steam swirls around her and fogs the mirror. She could be stuck in the bathroom for hours. Her reflection drips in the mirror, and she nods once at it. She puts a wet hand on the knob, breathes out all the air in her lungs, and pulls hard.

At first, she sees and hears nothing, but soon she catches movement in the living room. The cat darts back and forth like a shadow. Something hangs from its mouth. 

A mouse. Disgusting. 

Shuddering, June wraps the towel tighter around her and grabs a paper towel. When she is in the living room, though, June sees the glint of the three-pronged fishing hook dangling from the cat’s cheek. Her mouth opens into a little o. Before she takes another step, the cat paws at the hook and catches its right foot in one of the barbs. Its wail sends a shock through June. She almost feels the rip of the hook in her own hand. 

She looks in panic around the room, and her eyes find her cell phone on the dining table. She grabs it, punches in the number. “Oh my god, where are you?” Wet pools of blood gather like spilled milk as the three-footed cat flings itself around the apartment.

“Wha—what is that sound?” Owen’s voice is slurred and halting. “Is there, like, a coyote or something?”

High as a kite. Just what you need. Dirty, disgusting, filthy—

“Shut up, shut up,” June says, her mind a gravel of panic, but Owen is still on the line. 

“But—you called me,” he says slowly.

She hears the cat’s body thump against the walls, the cabinets, the table. “Listen to me. Eric’s cat has a hook caught in its mouth and paw. It’s bleeding everywhere, and I don’t know what to do.” 

A cat, of all creatures, a cat that pisses in the fern and eats food off the table. This is why dogs are so much better, at least they offer protection! 

“Well, did you call an ambulance?” 

June closes her eyes. Tears press like fists against her eyelids. “Fuck, Owen,” she says. She hangs up. The cat has stretched itself across the carpet in the living room. Its stomach rises and falls as fast as a heartbeat. It is silent and bleeding. 

Well, there’s not much else to do. It’s not even your cat.

“No. I’m not just going to let it die.” June pulls the towel from her body.

You can’t be serious. 

June feels the cool of the air conditioning against her collar bones. She wonders, briefly, what it might do to her skin, to grab an injured cat with nothing but a wet towel for protection.

The cat lifts its head as June approaches. When she is within a yard, she leaps and catches its slim body in her hands. She wraps the towel around the cat and pins it against her chest. The pulse of its panic matches her own heartbeat. She pushes the towel away from its head and sees the cheek and paw connected with a segment of silver.

June closes her eyes. Waves of nausea shiver through her. She grabs the hook between her fingers and works it in an arc through the cat’s cheek. The hook is sticky with blood, and she loses her grip. She presses white-tipped fingers around the metal. The hook pops when it finally pulls away.

Next, the paw. She says, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and the cat bawls in reply. She tucks the cat into the curve of her chest and steadies the paw with shaking fingers. June pulls down and out, the way you might pull the tooth of a child, and like that, it is done. 

She throws the barbed and bloody thing into the kitchen sink. Swaddling the towel around the cat’s paw, she sinks to the floor. She touches the velvety fur at the base of one of its ears. It is the only place not mottled with blood. She pets and pets until it feels like she is petting air. 

Eventually, a key rattles in the front door. Eric enters, a wet kayak paddle hanging from his left hand. “What the hell?” June hears him say. He tracks bloody footprints through the apartment and finds June huddled in a corner of the kitchen. “June, seriously, what the hell?” His voice falters when he sees the cat. “What did you do to my cat?”

She stands, and her eyes lock onto his. She follows his gaze as it falls down her body then back up. She blushes. The towel and cat cover her, but barely. She shifts the towel further down before quietly saying, “It was one of your fishing hooks.” The cat sits in her arms as heavy as a sack of flour. It shivers then slackens in the wet towel. “Take your cat to the vet. It needs stitches.” She steps toward him and places the cat into his arms, then turns quickly before Eric can see too much.

Eric looks down at the cat’s bloodied cheek, like chewed meat, then back at June, who has retreated quickly into the kitchen. She pauses by the trash can and sweeps the fishing hooks into it with her bare arm. She closes the lid with a snap and continues to her room.

When the front door clicks shut behind Eric, and his car rumbles and pulls away with the cat in the back seat, June is aware—for just a moment—of the space she takes up in the room, quiet and unremarkable, miraculous still in its own small way, like the mark a seed makes in the mud, pressing itself into something that doesn’t want to give, but its roots taking form anyway.

MACEY PHILLIPS is an MFA candidate in fiction at the Ohio State University as well as the managing editor for the literary journal, The Journal. Macey’s short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in J Journal, The Pinch Journal, and The Broadkill Review.