Current Issue: Spring/Summer 2011

Reluctant Vegan  
Rebecca Warner

"Once a woman, twice a child," Kat's grandmother used to say, whenever Kat helped her cut the meat on her plate. "Born in shit, die in shit," Kat's mother muttered bitterly whenever she had to change the old woman's Depends. After her grandmother's death Kat received a box in the mail. Beneath the garish pink dishes her grandmother had never used, a cutting board, among the items no one thought worth fighting over when they sorted through the grandmother's orphaned kitchenware. Kat ate from the dishes but couldn't bring herself to use a dead woman's cutting board, as if it held her fate like salmonella in its grain.

Her mother's cutting board had always left the taint of onion in the steaks she tenderized by pounding on the wood. Kat didn't eat steaks much anymore; her boyfriend David was vegan--lacto-ovo, he'd tell you. He ate tempeh and other rubbery, meat-like substitutes. David was opposed to red meat. Growth hormone, antibiotics, mad cow disease, he cited. They clearcut jungles to raise cattle in the Amazon. Still she craved a fat, juicy rainforest burger once in a while. She'd grown up in Indiana, all the women cattle-fed on corn-fed cattle. Where men are men and sheep are scared, was David's take on her home state.

They'd been together nearly five months. She was still reading the signs, parsing his remarks for flickers of irony and enlightenment. Sometimes she gazed into deep springs--not that she really saw what was in there--sometimes a shallow, reflective pool. David liked to birdie-feed her in bed, kissing her tenderly and spitting chewed-up food into her mouth. It made her feel exquisitely delicate and dependent, endearingly vulnerable. Their bed was a protective nest.

David was the kind of artsy, hip boyfriend she felt secretly proud to show off, a real artist who lived in a loft in the South End. One of his handpainted signs hung above the Jasmine Sky boutique: the figure of a woman reclined inside a half moon. David knew lots of people, which made Kat feel, by association, well-connected. He was a part-time actor and had done some modeling as well. One night he pulled out a copy of Details and shyly presented an ad for a dating service called "Connections," featuring David as an eligible bachelor, the sensitive, artsy type who appears in so many movies but rarely in real life. Her reaction was all wrong, Kat realized later. She had guffawed as if David were sharing an old, embarrassing yearbook picture. From his pained expression, she realized he was serious.

Her officemates referred to The Artist in capital letters. Kat worked for a Cambridge company that sold drug testing kits to parents. The manual instructed parents to pluck hairs from their child's head ("It is best if your teenager complies"), or steal hairs from the kids' brushes and combs ("To detect recent activity, the root must be attached"). Her boss alternated between a cheerleader and a thug. He owned half the Miami Dolphins and looked like he had once played football. He had OJ Simpson on his Rolodex. Don't cold call me! he bellowed in a terrible voice when Kat accidentally patched through a solicitor.

Recently the office workers had discovered a MySpace homepage featuring Mahout, a professional magician from Sri Lanka. "I am Mahout! I kiss you!" he proclaims from the screen in a peacock-blue Speedo. Just when she thought they'd never get past "Where’s the beef" and "Who let the dogs out," "I kiss you!" had become the office catchphrase, her co-workers mock-smacking their lips in the air. Wade, the tragic bisexual who was--tragically--in love with Kat, was the worst offender.

"Get the fuck away from me," she said when Wade kiss-smacked her. It was Monday and she was in no mood. Her boss had put a sticker on her computer to boost her morale, a "go get 'em" sticker in the shape of a thumbs-up. "Oh! Well, me-OW," said Wade and scratched at her. "Kitty has to litter," she growled, and stalked off to the unisex bathroom. Kat was starting to regret having asked Wade as her date to David’s party next weekend. David had suggested she bring a friend, warned her she wouldn't know anyone and he'd be busy. She was determined to be an independent girlfriend; people at the party would point to her as David's significant other, admiring her from afar as she chatted blithely among the guests.

She had to be careful, had to hold back. Sex was getting weird. David was physically attentive but often seemed miles away, concentrating on something beyond their bodies in bed. He complained about the condoms she insisted on; they were constricting, made it hard to perform. When Kat suggested they go together for testing he hadn't balked, exactly, but didn't seem to embrace it as the mutually trusting gesture that she'd hoped for. "AIDS, syphilis, the whole coterie," she said, not sure she was using the word correctly.

"They stick Q-tips in your penis," David said, wincing. She was aware he might have a history of unsavory women, ever since he'd remarked that he was surprised by her little-girl cotton underpants. She imagined his exes in leopard-skin thongs: daring, slutty underwear they probably called "panties." What kind of women were they? Not the kind who wore sensible underwear or took AIDS tests.

Kat brought home a new kitten--another test of sorts--and David was immediately taken with it. "MM-hmm," said Wade when she told him. David liked to blow in its nose and make its cheeks puff out. Alone in her bed, she lay with the cat curled on her chest, listening to the ticking of her travel clock and the hissing of the rain. The half-grown kitten had been weaned too early and tried in vain to suck on her T-shirt and the skin of her neck. If Kat rolled over in her sleep, the kitten was inclined to pace the room yowling. Kat would sit up in bed and practice her stern, patient look. Her older cat, sluggish and spayed, would irritably extend a paw and cuff the kitten on the head.

When the kitten went into heat, its yowling intensified. Kat chose the first veterinarian in the phone book: Robert Parker, DVM. The vet was handsome, in his early forties, and Kat noticed he didn't wear a ring. His hands were broad and gentle as he examined the cat's teeth to determine its age. She signed a waiver that explained, "There is always a risk of complication or death with any anesthetic." Kat left before the surgery began.

David came over that evening. He tossed an envelope on top of the TV. "Test results," he said in response to her quizzical look. She was grateful he'd followed through, though the whole point had been to go together as a couple. Was he waiting for her to open it? Would it seem rude, distrustful? She couldn't decide. She left the sealed envelope on the TV and they went into the kitchen to cook dinner. Lately she'd been slipping, letting her kitchen grow filthy. All the dishes they needed were in the sink. The recycling bin overflowed into an empty beer box. Once, during a fight, David had threatened to leave her, saying, "I don't know if I want to be with someone who lives like this."

After dinner she drove him home. His car, as he put it, had shit the bed. That night Kat dreamed about a roomful of incubators with cats inside, like a maternity ward. The vet appeared in a doctor's mask and pushed his hands through the built-in rubber gloves, petting the animals in their glass cages.

She awoke at dawn to the steady pulsing of the clock and the rain, the ticking of the electric heater as the thermostat kicked on. She arrived at the veterinary clinic soon after it opened. The kitten was groggy but conscious, and spat at Dr. Parker when he lifted it from the wire kennel. Inside the cardboard carrier, it continued to howl and scratch. Kat drove home thinking of her grandmother, as the windshield wipers thrummed and the kitten mewed inconsolably in its box.

 

David's loft was a tri-level: when you walked in the door, you had to decide immediately whether to go up or down. When she and Wade arrived at the party Kat chose down, to the kitchen area, where David had set up a bar. She didn't see him anywhere. One woman was breastfeeding a baby in a corner. Kat looked away. It wasn't the nudity, it was the public intimacy. Last time she'd tried to cozy up to a baby, it had appeared soft and enticing. Then it shoved her face away as she leaned in to kiss it. She swore she saw a malevolent gleam in the baby's eye as she recoiled from it.

A woman with an angular, asymmetrical haircut stood by the macrobiotic canapés. Her face looked pinched, as if the strain of being avant-garde was squeezing the life out of her. She seemed so miserable, clutching a blue drink in a martini glass, Kat decided to introduce herself. Ondine, as it turned out, had once shared a gallery exhibit with David, before he'd turned to sign-painting. "I'm David's girlfriend," Kat said. Ondine raised a penciled eyebrow, suggesting either doubt or disapproval. Kat was beginning to wonder if Ondine was a woman after all. Her pores looked suspicious, enlarged and cakey with concealer.

Kat found David holding court upstairs, running his hand through his hair with that affected casualness men put on, so it doesn't look like they're arranging their hair. An energetic young woman was describing her latest art installation. David used to make installations too--kinky dioramas with Ken dolls in leather vests. "It's an interactive installation," the young woman was saying. "There are all these little metal people, and when you hold a magnet up to the top of the case, they knock each other over as the magnet pulls them up a ramp toward a giant pyramid with an eye." David, Kat thought, seemed riveted, a little too rapt. Kat sidled up to him. She had to squeeze awkwardly between him and the wall. "Hey you," she said, waiting for him to introduce her.

"Oh, this is Kat," he said. "Brigit was just telling me about her latest piece."

"It's an interactive installation," Brigit said, smiling brightly. Kat was taken aback by the openness of her grin. When she was with David, she was used to meeting women who looked like they were smelling onions. But Brigit's smile held no trace of animosity. She clearly didn't view Kat as a threat, which Kat found vaguely insulting.

Wade appeared to be doing okay on his own, chatting up a hippieish couple by the chocolate fountain. David had rented a triple-tiered, bubbling fountain that ran recycled liquid chocolate through it. Little bits of spongecake and strawberry seeds pocked the velvety surface of the chocolate. The couple laughed at whatever Wade was saying before moving off quickly, pretending to look for someone or something.

Wade pulled Kat behind the chocolate fountain and pointed. David was standing close to Brigit, feeding her a stuffed mushroom. Brigit opened her mouth like a baby bird, then bared her teeth. Kat had an urge to do something drastic, like lick the chocolate fountain. The intimacy of it. Beneath Brigit's sweet-girl demeanor lurked a slutty thong.

"You don't need this. You don't need this," said Wade.

 

For once, on the cab ride home, Wade didn't say anything. She was surprised to discover he was capable of sympathetic silence. That gay disco anthem was playing on Kiss 108. What you know--to be real.... They passed the Jasmine Sky, David's handpainted sign luminous under a full moon. What kind of woman am I? Kat mused. One morning you wake up next to a golden boy, then--presto change-o!--something else. Like a promise. Like a life.

Outside her building, Wade kissed her cheek. A nice kiss. A real kiss, not a Mahout impression. Kat climbed the stairs and entered her kitchen, where she pulled her grandmother's cutting board out of its box. She had taken to hiding steaks in her refrigerator, throwing them out when they went bad. Kat nudged aside David's tofu Not Dogs and reached inside the fridge. She eyed the envelope with David's test results as she ate her strip steak in front of the TV, her kitten weaving figure eights around her ankles.

 

Rebecca Warner is the author of one book of poetry, Northwest Passage, published by Orchises Press in 2005. Her work has appeared in Notre Dame Review, Paterson Literary Review, Puerto del Sol, Minnesota Review, The Writer's Chronicle and elsewhere. She teaches at Susquehanna University.