---   M I C H A E L   L O M B A R D O  

Nobody believes this part of the story, but I refuse to fictionalize it: the name really was Rosebud.

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I think it was named after my Aunt Rosie, who rescued all kinds of animals and had a habit of naming them after the street where she found them: Jefferys, Cadiux, Ninth. But it was mom, I think, who found the kitten just off M-66 and chose the name as a sort of homage. I can't be sure; this is not one of those stories that is frequently told around the dinner table, where we can all hash out the details together.

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Here's what I do know: dad was changing the oil on the Bronco II, something he used to do himself back then. After emptying the old pan into one of those cheap foil pieplates you can buy at the IGA he got heady with the handyman spirit and pursued some other cause, so much consumed that he forgot about the discus full of tar, neat. It was laying right next to him, demonstrating with flatness its disinterest in what happened with it next. I wouldn't really care, it would have said, if you forgot me here all day.

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But Rosebud did not or did forget something else, something about avoiding things that smell foul and are black. She may have started off just batting, dipping her little paws in it and pulling them back out, amused by the elasticity or the surface tension. That seems like something a kitten would do. Or she could have just taken a flying leap at it, consumed by her own reflection, then landed with a muffled clink. I guess that had to have happened either way, for the story to make sense.

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It's a handy transition, too: to dad peeking out from underneath the truck to see what that noise was and spotting Rosebud, rolling around, trying to toss off the black coils, licking at the burnt blackberry juice. He never liked cats, but he knew that mom and I had a thing for this one. It must have been named after Rosie---he would never have consented to that name otherwise. He who named four dogs in a row Peppie.

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He called out to mom, who flipped out. I now know that's something she used to do a lot in those days. She's gotten better since: lithium. But back then, the sight of this poor cat was more than enough. Dad had already given the college try at washing Rosebud with water, soap, and soapy water, but it wasn't helping and the kitten just kept licking and licking, stupidly licking and licking, its tongue a chameleon from ash to elephant to slate. Something had to be done, there must have been something that would get the oil out of the fur. Mom's solution, the belch of a demented Eloise: gasoline.

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Gasoline.

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Did I see it? There's a question. They say the long-term visual memory we have as adults doesn't kick in until four, give or take a year. So if I trust physiology, I'm safe. Still, I can visualize it with alarming detail. Have I invented the specific still-frames? Cat writhing in laundry tub; red unspigoted can shooting those funny fumes into the air; mom spooning it over marbleized fur with an ashtray; the heartbeat of a look we shared; boy and cat; what does all this mean; dad scrutinizing the ceiling tiles, chest immobile; the sad soothing words that seemed to bubble out of the walls themselves; good kitty, it's okay, it's okay, we'll make it all better, you're such a good kitty, it's okay.

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Accounts differ about what happened next; I have no memory of either. Dad says Rosebud died then and there, in the tub. Gave it up: toxins, drowning, heart attack, asphyxiation. Mom says they both realized what a terrible idea that gasoline really was and, in that silent way of parents, glided off in separate directions, she to attend to me, he to go out back and do the decent thing.

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Despite the credibility blow her memory has since taken, I prefer mom's version. I think the reasons are pretty obvious, though that way does leave my dad in a tight spot, walking out back, under the walnut tree where they had dug a little firepit and made stools of stumps, a wet, gasping bundle in his arms. They had a chicken coop and I have managed to get him to talk about wringing and plucking on occasion, but he has never owned up to Rosebud. He's only spoken of the cat once.

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But it raises the question just the same: how do you do it right? Snap the neck, I guess, or use a shovel, like he once did to a fieldmouse I found in the pantry. As I recall, the burial ceremony by the Big Rock in the yard was a closed casket affair. At some point, I came up with the idea that we actually buried Rosebud under the rock; whenever I looked at it afterward I thought of it as covering the cat. Of course, that would have been just about impossible, given its size. Dad was strong but not a glacier.

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I sometimes try to remember what brand of box it was, since I have no memories of what my parents wore for shoes those days. Barefoot seems right given the idea of it all, but it was a little too Northern Michigan for that. It could have been the box from one of mine, I suppose. Rosebud was a tiny little thing and 1981 was also the year I discovered Velcro.