Cat in Glass by Nancy Etchemendy

was over, Stephen announced with exaggerated brightness, “Girls, we’d like your help in deciding an important question.”
    “Oh goody,” said Rose.
    “What is it?” said Eleanor.
    “Please don’t,” I said. It was all I could do to keep from shouting.
    Stephen flashed me the boyish grin with which he had originally won my heart. “Oh, come on. Try to look at it objectively. You’re just sensitive about this because of an irrational notion from your childhood. Let the girls judge. If they like it, why not keep it?”
    I should have ended it there. I should have insisted. Hindsight is always perfect, as they say. But inside me a little seed of doubt had sprouted. Stephen was always so logical and so right, especially about financial matters. Maybe he was right about this, too.
    He had brought the thing home from the appraiserwithout telling me. He was never above a little subterfuge if it got him his own way. Now he carried the carton in from the garage and unwrapped it in the middle of our warm, hardwood floor, with all the lights blazing. Nothing had changed. I found it as frightening as ever. I could feel cold sweat collecting on my forehead as I stared at it, all aglitter in a rainbow of refracted lamplight.
    Eleanor was enthralled with it. She caught our real cat, a calico named Jelly, and held it up to the sculpture. “See, Jelly? You’ve got a handsome partner now.” But Jelly twisted and hissed in Eleanor’s arms until she let her go. Eleanor laughed and said Jelly was jealous.
    Rose was almost as uncooperative as Jelly. She shrank away from the glass cat, peeking at it from between her father’s knees. But Stephen would have none of that.
    “Go on, Rose,” he said. “It’s just a kitty made of glass. Touch it and see.” And he took her by the shoulders and pushed her gently toward it. She put out one hand, hesitantly, as she would have with a live cat who did not know her. I saw her finger touch a nodule of glass shards that might have been its nose. She drew back with a little yelp of pain. And that’s how it began. So innocently.
    “He bit me!” she cried.
    “What happened?” said Stephen. “Did you break it?” He ran to the sculpture first, the brute, to make sure she hadn’t damaged it.
    She held her finger out to me. There was a tiny cut with a single drop of bright red blood oozing from it. “Mommy, it burns, it burns.” She was no longer just crying. She was screaming.
    We took her into the bathroom. Stephen held her while I washed the cut and pressed a cold cloth to it. The bleeding stopped in a moment, but still she screamed. Stephen grew angry. “What’s this nonsense? It’s a scratch. Just a scratch.”
    Rose jerked and kicked and bellowed. In Stephen’s defense, I tell you now it was a terrifying sight, and he was never able to deal well with real fear, especially in himself. He always tried to mask it with anger. We had a neighbor who was a physician. “If you don’t stop it, Rose, I’ll call Doctor Pepperman. Is that what you want?” he said, as if Doctor Pepperman, a jolly septuagenarian, were anything but charming and gentle, as if threats were anything but asinine at such a time.
    “For God’s sake, get Pepperman! Can’t you see something’s terribly wrong?” I said.
    And for once he listened to me. He grabbed Eleanor by the arm. “Come with me,” he said and stomped across the yard through the snow without so much as a coat. I believe he only took Eleanor, also without a coat, because he was so unnerved that he didn’t want to face the darkness alone.
    Rose was still screaming when Dr. Pepperman arrived fresh from his dinner, specks of gravy clinging to his mustache. He examined Rose’s finger and looked mildly puzzled when he had finished. “Can’t see much wrong here. I’d say it’s mostly a case of hysteria.” He took a vial and a syringe from his small, brown case and gave Rose an injection, “to help settle her down,” he said. It seemed to