Page 6 of Brain Damage

The one thing I do wish we had is a doorman. We have a buzzer to enter the building, and it always makes me a little nervous. You know, being a single woman living all alone and all. Everyone just lets everyone in behind them even if they don’t know them—it’s like a free-for-all. But I’ve got a padlock on my door that the locksmith assured me that not even the best spy in the CIA would be able to jimmy open. So hopefully, I won’t be murdered.

When I get home, I toss my keys onto the kitchen counter and let out a long, cleansing sigh. Before I’ve taken two steps into the apartment, my cat races over to me and meows loudly, then looks up at me with big, longing green-yellow eyes. Two years ago, I adopted a black cat from an animal shelter, which I named Kitty (I’m a doctor—I’m not creative). And now she’s become my best friend.

I’d wanted a cat forever, but I was afraid to get one. Why? Partially because I work long hours, and I wasn’t sure if I’d have time to take care of a cat. But also because I was afraid that getting one cat might be a gateway drug to becoming a weird cat lady—someone who goes to work covered in a layer of cat hair and throws kitties at teenagers playing their rap music too loudly.

The weird cat lady isn’t just a terrible stereotype. I honestly believe it’s a real thing. Up to fifty percent of cats carry an infection known as toxoplasmosis, which is the reason pregnant women shouldn’t change litter boxes. I’ve read that toxoplasmosis can theoretically infect the brain of the owners, effectively causing psychosis. So the weird cat lady might not just be weird because she’s got twenty cats in her home… it might be because of toxoplasmosis. That’s a real thing. I didn’t want to end up with toxoplasmosis psychosis.

But then I figured, screw it, I’ll get a cat.

I open up a can of cat food for Kitty. Kitty refuses to eat any dry food and will only eat gourmet brands of canned cat food. I swear, the stuff looks so good, sometimes I’m tempted to take a taste. (Okay, I admit it, I did try it once. Not recommended if you’re human.) I honestly don’t know why my cat is such a spoiled diva, especially considering three months before I adopted her, she was eating out of garbage cans.

For myself, I pull a salmon filet out of the refrigerator and throw it in the frying pan with some olive oil, salt, and pepper. No matter how tired I am at night, I always cook myself a hot meal on the stove. Nothing gourmet, but hey, it’s better than a TV dinner.

I hear my phone buzzing inside my purse, and contemplate whether I should answer. It could be my best friend Brigid (well, best friend after Kitty), but more likely, it’s my mother. Ever since my father passed on, she’s been checking up on me on a daily basis. And our conversations always touch on the exact same topics: the fact that I live alone and the fact that I don’t have a boyfriend. I’m not in the mood right now, but I pick up anyway.

“Charly!” my mother booms. She must be on her cell phone. She’s somehow unable to regulate the volume of her voice when she’s on the cell phone. She basically always just shouts, thinking I won’t hear her otherwise. She sounds the way I do when I’m talking to my older patients who are hard of hearing.

“Hi, Mom,” I say. I glance over at my salmon, which is currently steaming. “I can’t really talk. I’m in the middle of cooking dinner.”

“What are you making!”

“Salmon with a salad,” I say as I pull a head of lettuce out of the fridge. Since I read that pre-packaged lettuce is dangerously unhealthy, I’ve been cutting my own, so I have to balance the phone precariously between my chin and my neck as I slice. I miss the days of ignorance.

“Don’t forget to turn off the stove when you’re done,” she warns me.

“You really think I’m going to forget to turn off the stove if you don’t tell me?” I’m trying to keep the irritation out of my voice but it’s hard. “I mean, I’ve cooked thousands of meals living on my own, and you think that the only thing stopping me from keeping the stove on and burning down the building is you telling me to turn it off? Is that really what you think?”

“It can’t hurt to remind you,” she sniffs.

I love my mother. I really do. Probably more than anyone else in the world. But somehow it’s become impossible to have a conversation with her without me ending up shouting, then feeling guilty about it later. Why does talking to your parents always make you regress to your teenage years?

“Charly,” Mom says, “I know you’re going to say no to this, but the son of this woman I met playing bridge is interested in⁠—”

“No.”

“But if you could just meet him and⁠—”

“No.”

“Why are you so stubborn, Charly?” Mom says. “I mean, you’re in your mid-thirties. Don’t you want to get married and have kids?”

I think back to Harold Branham’s desolated funeral and feel a brief jab of foreboding. But that’s no reason to go on a horrible date set up by my mother.

“I told you—if it happens, it happens.” I shrug at my salmon. “If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”

“If you don’t make it happen, then it won’t happen.”

“Then it won’t happen.”

“But Charly⁠—”

“My dinner is ready,” I say as I lift the lid off my pan containing the salmon. The filet has turned that pink color that lets me know that it’s cooked to a medium-rare. Perfect. “I’ll have to talk to you later.”

My mother reluctantly gets off the phone so that I can assemble my plate of dinner. I love being able to eat whatever I want for dinner, then watch whatever I want on television while Kitty settles down on the sofa next to me so that I can stroke her soft, black fur.

The truth is, I haven’t met a guy yet whose company I enjoyed better than the peace of my own home. Why wreck something that’s already perfect just because I’m worried about my funeral?

But then as the perfectly cooked salmon dissolves on my tongue, I can’t help but think about Clark Douglas, that patient from this morning. And how, even though it’s practically impossible, I wouldn’t entirely mind if he were here, sharing dinner with me right now. And maybe hanging around for a bit afterwards.