The Last House on Needless Street

by Catriona Ward

When I try to separate them, feathers part from flesh. The birds make no sound. Maybe that’s the worst part. Birds aren’t like people. Pain makes them quiet.

Pets are better than their owners in general. I feel bad for all those dogs and cats and rabbits and mice. They have to live with people but, worse, they have to love them. Now, Olivia is not a pet. She’s so much more than that. (I expect everyone feels this about their cat.)

I judge people two ways—on how they treat animals, and on what they like to eat. If their favorite food is some kind of salad, they are definitely a bad person. Anything with cheese, they are probably OK.

Killing things is hard, sure, but keeping them safe and alive is much more difficult.

Children are like a chain around your heart or neck, and they pull you in every direction.

What we want isn’t always what’s best for us.

The gods are closer than you would think. They live among the trees, behind a skin so thin you could scratch it open with a fingernail.

A soft white glow gathered on his chest, over the place where his heart must be. The glow became a cord, reaching out through the air. The cord approached me. I rowed and struggled. But I was held fast. I felt the light encircle my neck, link me to his heart. It didn’t hurt. It bound us together. I don’t know if he felt it too—I like to think he did.

This is really cute imagery for bonds to our pets

Anyway the trick to life is, if you don’t like what is happening, go back to sleep until it stops.

Everything in life is a rehearsal for loss. Only the smart people know it.”

“I want you to feel the power of it,” she said. “Of walking away from something you love. Doesn’t it make you feel strong?”

So it was many years before it happened that Mommy began to prepare me for her departure. I understand her better, now. Now I’m a parent I know how afraid you get for your child. Sometimes when I think about Lauren I feel almost see-through with fear, like a pane of glass. When we got home Mommy put me in the bath and gently checked me all over. She found a scratch on my calf where I leaked out red. She drew the flesh back together with two neat sutures from her kit. Breaking me, then mending me, over and over—that was my mother.

Let me tell you a couple of things about white cats. They are sneaky, they are mean, and they are below average intelligence. I am aware that you are not supposed to say stuff like that, that it is not POLITICALLY CORRECT but it’s gd true and everyone knows.

You can’t tell what people are like from what they do. You can do a bad thing even though you’re not a bad person. Bad people could do good things accidentally. You can’t really know, is my point.”

“I’ll tell you a secret, kitten. Everyone feels like that sometimes. Sometimes things get bad, and you can’t see a future ahead. It’s all cloudy, like the sky on a rainy day. But life moves very fast. Things never stay the same forever, even the bad things. The clouds will blow away. They always do, I promise.”

The young feel pain intensely, I think, because they don’t know yet how deep it can go.

People have eyes to look and ears to listen, and women

Get through it, get it done; no matter how unpleasant, however hard your heart pounds in the night, whatever dreams may come. Get it done.

A panic attack, she thinks vaguely. Got to get it together. But it’s like sinking deeper and deeper into a sand dune; she can’t just climb out.