Alchemy and Algebra

Chapter 15

Dinner finished, Charlie washed the dishes while Kennedy dried. Howl circled her legs in a way that was endearing at first, but was quickly becoming annoying. When took a step to the side to put down a large dish and nearly stepped on Howl, she cried out in alarm.

"This cat of yours is a hazard!" she said.

"He's always excited about new people. Once, just once, someone came over and snuck him a piece of chicken destined for the trash, so now he hopes that everyone who comes through the door will do the same. Just shoo him away a few times and he'll get the idea."

"What, precisely, does shooing involve?"

Charlie turned to look at her. "You've never had a cat before?"

"No. My mother claimed she was allergic. I think she just didn't want to do any more vacuuming than she had to with three kids in the house."

"Oh. That's too bad about the pets. I'm an only child, but I almost always had an animal in the house. Mostly cats. One dog. A rat when I was in my 'screw you' phase."

Howl gave Kennedy a particularly firm shove to the back of her ankles, setting her off balance again. "The shooing?"

"Right. Use your shoe to move the cat. Like this." Charlie put his toe under the cat's belly and gently directed him away from Kennedy.

"He doesn't mind?"

"It only hurts his dignity, promise."

The cat made a circuit of the room, then returned to Kennedy. When he rubbed the side of her leg, she got a child-like thrill from pushing the cat with her foot. She went back to drying the dishes, still warm from the hot water. The air near the sink was humid and fragrant with the lemon smell of Charlie's eco-friendly dish-soap.

"So it was just you and your parents growing up? And your pets?" Kennedy asked.

"Just me and my Mom, actually. My parents split up when I was two, so I'm told."

"But you have your doubts?"

"Not really. I don't remember my parents living together, so it had to have happened before I was five or so. But my mother is a bit tight with details about the split, so I don't have a full picture of what happened. She likes to... shape the information to match her thoughts."

Kennedy held out her hand for the bowl Charlie had just finished scrubbing. "I think I'd rather have my family than pets. Mom was pretty frazzled when we were young, but she was honest to a fault, and Dad never pulled any punches with the important stuff, either."

"Why was your mom so frazzled, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Because I'm fourteen months younger than my brother and sister."

"Both of them?" Charlie held a plate up to the light. "Oh, fraternal twins. Yeah, it must have been busy when you guys were little."

"I liked it. It was like our own little club. My name was the only part I didn't like. When my mom was expecting the twins, my parents took forever to pick two names that were balanced, not giving one my dad's first name, but the other my grandmother's middle name, you know? So by the time they got a first and middle name for a boy and a girl, they were burnt out on picking names. When I came along, they decided that they'd use both their middle names, boy or girl, and that was that."

"So Kennedy is your Dad's middle name?"

"My Mom's. She was born just after JFK was assassinated, and her parents wanted to honor him in some way. I'm glad they did, really, because my Dad's middle name is Garnet."