Another Tuesday, another writing prompt. This is getting really fun. This week, we were asked to write based on the prompt "loving," in honor of the upcoming Valentine's day. This morning, as I faced an empty page and an hour long ride in the passenger seat on the way up to retrieve the 4Runner from it's mountain resting place, I said out loud that I needed a story based on that. Mr X suggested the basic theme, and my initial reaction was "Hm. Write what you know." So I did. I took a real day from my life, changed the timelines and names, and sprinkled in a few real details. This is the result.
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Alice Free wandered toward the back porch of the little old building on South Broadway. It used to be a house, but for years, since way before she was born, it was her grandfather’s dentist office. Well, half of it was. The other half of the building was closed off, and she had never been over there, not in all of the nine years she had been alive. She sort of remembered Grandma saying that another dentist used to work over there, but he was dead now. Or something like that. Whatever it was, that side of the building seemed scary to her, and she never felt like trying to go into it.
She was supposed to be staying with Grandpa this afternoon, while Grandma was at the beauty shop getting her hair done and Mom was at her new job. It was fun for a while, as long as Alice was playing with the dental plaster, filling the little rubber molds of animal shapes that Grandpa kept around for days like this. But now she was waiting for the plaster to set up, and Grandpa was busy filling the cavities of some old lady who acted like she knew her, but Alice couldn’t remember her from anywhere. The dental drill whined loudly, echoing down the otherwise quiet hallway. Grandpa never talked much while he worked.
So Alice went in search of a Coke and a change of scenery. There was an old soda machine from the 1950s in the back of the office, filled with the little glass bottles that she liked way better than aluminum cans with the pull tabs that hurt her fingers. Grandpa usually let her have a soda when she was here, so she thought it might be okay to help herself this time. The old porch where it sat was closed in with windows that rattled in their frames when the little girl walked across the floorboards, no matter how gently she stepped. The soda machine was rigged so that Alice didn’t have to put in any coins, and the bottles made a satisfying clink as she pulled one through the narrow door and the rest settled to fill the void. She pried off the cap with the opener on the side of the white Coke machine, and wondered what else to do while she waited for the plaster to dry.
She looked outside, deciding that it probably wouldn’t be too hot to be out there. It was late June, and starting to get really hot most days, and Alice was having a hard time getting used to how sticky summers were in Oklahoma. Of course, this summer had been harder on her all around. A month and a half earlier, her mom had loaded up all of their stuff into a U-Haul truck and Alice, mom, and their cat Butch drove away from the house they had only moved into the year before, leaving Dad behind in it. Both Mom and Dad assured her that they still loved her, but Alice was having a hard time understanding why they couldn’t love each other enough to stay married. And then on top of that, two weeks after they arrived at her grandparents’ house to live, Butch died from feline leukemia. This was the worst summer ever.
Alice stepped out and sat on the back stairs, sipping her Coke. Big fluffy clouds kept passing in front of the sun, keeping her from getting too hot. She sat facing the alley, watching cars go through the drive-through bank on 13th Street. She could hear the tellers talking to drivers through the tinny speakers, but she couldn’t make out the words. She was still learning to understand everyone’s heavy Oklahoma accents, after years of living all over the world, wherever the air force sent her with her dad.
There was a rustle below the stairs, and Alice looked down in time to see something small and orange move near her. She set down her Coke carefully, and held her breath while she moved quietly and swiftly. She grabbed the little kitten she had seen with one hand and held him up close to her face so she could see him more clearly. The little thing was startled at being scooped up by an unseen predator, or so he must have thought, and he bit Alice on the finger. This surprised her and she dropped him into the thick plants that grew as ground cover between the alley and the office, where he all but disappeared.
That might have been the end of it, but Alice wasn’t about to give up once she had seen him. It was almost as if she was enchanted the moment he bit her hand. Her plaster toys were forgotten once she caught sight of her quarry. The kitten ran back and forth through the dark green leaves in the flowerbed, too young and scared to be still so that he would have been invisible. For almost ten minutes, Alice darted up and down the edge of the flowerbed, thrusting her hand into the leaves and narrowly missing him over and over. Finally she connected with him, and this time she used two hands to capture the little guy, and she held on tightly.
He must have been quite young, because even in her little girl hands, he was very small. He was orange all over, and striped clearly. His head was big for his body, and his eyes were big for his head. He was actually kind of an ugly kitten, she thought. But that didn’t matter one bit. From the moment he bit her, she was in love. He didn’t belong to anyone else. She found him, and he was hers. He was even starting to be calmer in her hands, now that he seemed used to the idea of this human who held him still, unlike before when he was flying through the air held by a terrifying creature much bigger than he. Alice put him against her body, freeing one hand enough to start to pet him gently. He held himself stiffly, but he didn’t try to bite again.
Alice and the kitten went back into the dentist office through the back door. She needed to ask Grandpa whether she could go back to the house, even though Grandma wasn’t back from her hair appointment yet. They lived just four blocks from the office, and she thought if she left now, she could make it all the way without the kitten jumping down again. She wasn’t about to lose him now that she had found him. He just didn’t know yet how much he was going to love her. He soon would. They both would. This summer just got a whole lot better.
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