Author: Stephen J Frankenberry

Been a bit of a, I won’t say weird, but weird week (Jesus, those pipes doing pipe things in old houses sound like someone was just finishing up a shower upstairs) though I’ve surely heard weirder in other times, the usual solitary ones, in other old houses, but I have been in this one alone since Tuesday (and who the fuck is in the shower? Beck didn’t warn me of any old haunts like someone died in this place but just wants to stay clean in the limbo life and thus the great deal she got) just me and the cats, mine and hers “No Arthur you are not going out, I don’t care which door you sit at, that shit is not happenin’. You ain’t goin’ out. I will NOT be accomplice to you being an Arthur that is no longer an Arthur before Beck comes home! I already announced to you, days ago, that while I’m the new Momma cat guy ’round here you are a house cat!”

My sis, Beck, took off on Tuesday earlier this week, along with nephew Matt and Beck’s guy Buck whose last name is Rogers, he was a pilot, and they called him “Buck”, Buck Rogers, get it? that’s just cool, to see my other nephew, Jake, graduate from basic in the Navy and be all Mom proud amid coughs and sniffles and frog throats like the devil had found a voice and trips to the Walgreens cold and flu aisle before she left, damned if she wasn’t going to be allowed to cough anything up on him other than tears of that said pride. “No Jake, my tears of joy are just a little gloopy, sticky green is the color of love, you’ve made me so proud!”

And he did and he does.

But the weird was the silence. I’ve grown so accustomed now, new, over the last six months or so, to the loud of the garage door announcing me when I come home to Beck in the kitchen doing a Beck kitchen with pots and pans and loud smells, to the loud of Ricki, aka chunky pants, if a bowling ball were covered in tortoise cat fur and had a head, meowing at me in her smoker sounding kinda way when I open the door to the house from out the garage hoping for a treat from this guy, while Beck reminds that Cricket the Blind was doing her loud Cricket meowls from downstairs earlier, calling for me, to the loud jingle of collars of Sephira running away from me and Arthur just staring at the interloper, who might or might not let him out whatever door he keeps sitting at with an equally loud jingly collar, but there was a kind of silence the last few days and it was a bit jarring.

I mean, the loud of jingly collars and smoker cats was still loud around the place but it was a bit muted, subdued, minus that Momma human cat or a nephew to hold Arthur like a sack of beans until a squirm’s gleeful angry meow says “enough”

There is also that this coming week is the one where we lay my mom to rest “Oh, bloody hell Stephen will you all just get on with it already!” after she passed away a couple of weeks ago now with us on hand, almost, Matt, Buck and I, but Beck? She was the true witness of time passed with an Ok allowed thankful exhale.

And I don’t even know what to wear, well, I do, but I really need to bring that suit out of a storage bin and air it out or maybe even buy something new, fresh. Now that is a daunting thought as I don’t really do clothes, not well anyway.

But Jake looked fantastic and picture proud in a text from Beck of him having survived to get to shiny shoes and a tie perfect Navy collar and hat you could roll a cat ball around for some fun. I sent a dearest of friend a pic of him in the midst of our radio show prep together in his blues … is that what they call them in the Navy, blues? I’m just guessing as I have no clue, but she said it made her want to cry as she saw that he was the “IT” in his proud and his shiny shoe’s cat ball spin hat stance.

But this silence of a Beck home, it is hers, I just live here at her pleasure, with of course some managed litter boxes and feedings of her gang in her absence, cracked cans under cat noses, a thing I do with Bella and Cricket, that seems to have ingratiated me a bit as a new, to assure that they are cat seafood stinky enough to pass muster for cat consumption and also a couple of bucks to pay my way, but this silence? This particular silence? It was new and I didn’t like it.

I have spent so many recent years receding from sight and sound and something about furies that I forgot how much I like loud, even though I did do loud at my most recent spot before here, sometimes even a howling combine of multiple dogs that would just make me laugh at their off key song to the hills and perk a Bella ear but I played that off with headphones or just a bit of volume on the tube, but this loud that has been lacking here? It’s different. Even Arthur agrees as he has found himself at my feet while Mom is away to grab a belly at the washer/dryer for fresh sundries and even brave a Bella nose while just wanting to hear me talk to him.  

Beck will be home tomorrow, Arthur will forget that he looked for me, though I hope not, Sephira will skitter and zoom under or on top of beds away (though she does mind me and gladly’ll take a quick pet when she is not zooming if she wishes … she is a bit of a Diva) Ricki will always sound like she wants me to run to the convenience store for a pack of Reds and I will get back to true loud silence. With company. I WILL like that.

Mom will get laid to earth for that true silence and I will cry quietly, again “Oh Hell’s Bells Stephen, enough with the drama. We had a good run, this Mom and Son thing right?”

“Now, just go tend to those cats of yours, yours and Becks, and grandsons, just get back to being loud in your quiet way along with your sister”

“Gotcha Ma”