Pandora was eating cereal too quietly. I noticed this at approximately eight-twenty in the morning while standing at the kitchen counter making toast, and I realize there are people who will argue that cereal does not have an appropriate volume. Those people have probably never lived with Pandora. She normally talks during breakfast. Sometimes she talks while actually eating, which creates logistical challenges but has never stopped her. She comments on the weather, tells me something she read the night before, reminds me about something I have forgotten, or explains why Mr Whiskers is not allowed to have whatever he is currently attempting to obtain. This morning there was nothing, just the occasional sound of her spoon against the bowl. I buttered my toast and tried not to look at her, which naturally resulted in me looking at her approximately every fifteen seconds. Mr Whiskers was sitting beside her chair staring upward with an intensity that initially concerned me. He wasn’t meowing or rubbing against her leg. He was simply sitting there, watching. Pandora took another spoonful of cereal. Mr Whiskers’ head moved with the spoon. She lowered it. His head lowered. She raised it again. His head followed. I watched this happen three times before recognizing that Mr Whiskers wasn’t monitoring Pandora’s emotional state. He wanted the milk. This was encouraging because it demonstrated that I was getting better at distinguishing suspicious behavior from ordinary cat behavior. Yesterday I had briefly accused him of destroying evidence after he pulled a piece of paper from the trash, so I considered this an important methodological improvement.
Pandora remained the problem. “Everything okay?” I asked. “Yep.” One word. I waited, but nothing else came. Now, yep is not inherently suspicious. It is a perfectly acceptable answer to many questions. But Pandora doesn’t usually give me one-word answers at breakfast unless she is tired, distracted, irritated, or attempting to prevent herself from saying something. She didn’t look tired. She wasn’t checking her phone. And as far as I knew, I hadn’t done anything irritating since yesterday afternoon, when I had asked whether a doodled flower on Mrs Jenkins’ shopping list was connected to the flower painted on one of her garden gnomes. Pandora had eventually stopped discussing that subject with me, but I considered the matter resolved. Mostly. I took a bite of toast and tried to reconstruct the morning. John had stopped by earlier to return the travel mug he’d borrowed a few days ago. I had been upstairs getting dressed when he arrived, so Pandora had let him in. By the time I came downstairs, John was standing in the kitchen drinking coffee while Pandora leaned against the counter. They had both been smiling. That hadn’t seemed important at the time. John stayed for maybe ten minutes, we talked about nothing particularly interesting, and then he left. Pandora had been quiet ever since.
There was the sequence. John arrived. John spoke privately with Pandora. I entered. Both were smiling. John left. Pandora became unusually quiet. I want to emphasize that I did not immediately conclude John had said something to upset her. There were numerous alternatives. Maybe Pandora was tired. Maybe she had remembered something she needed to do. Maybe John had told her something private that had nothing whatsoever to do with me. Maybe she was simply enjoying her cereal. All of these explanations were reasonable, and I considered each one carefully before returning to the obvious problem: Pandora had been perfectly normal before John arrived. “What did John say to you?” I asked. Pandora stopped with her spoon halfway to her mouth. There. That reaction mattered. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Before I came downstairs.” She said nothing. I stared at her. Pandora looked at me. Mr Whiskers looked at the spoon. “You were talking.” Pandora reminded me that people do that. I told her I understood the general concept. “I’m glad,” she said, and took another bite. Mr Whiskers’ head followed the spoon again.
I decided not to push. There is a difference between asking a reasonable question and conducting an interrogation, and after recent events Pandora had become unfairly sensitive to that distinction. I returned my attention to the toast. For perhaps thirty seconds, the kitchen was completely silent. Then Pandora smiled. It lasted less than a second, but I saw it. “What?” I asked. “Nothing.” I pointed out that she had smiled. She said she was eating breakfast. “Those are not mutually exclusive activities.” Pandora put down her spoon. That was when I knew John had said something. The question was what. My first thought was that John might have made a joke at my expense. This was statistically plausible. John has occasionally found amusement in my methods, particularly when those methods involve gathering information he considers unnecessary. Yesterday’s shopping-list situation would have provided material, although I didn’t see what was particularly funny about attempting to determine why unexplained symbols had appeared on a document inside my home. They turned out to be doodles, admittedly, but that could only be known after determining what they were. Investigation frequently looks unnecessary in retrospect. That’s one of its defining frustrations.
I considered asking Pandora directly whether John had been talking about the shopping list, but that would reveal that I had already developed a hypothesis. Better to gather additional information first. I asked whether John seemed okay when he arrived. Pandora looked suspiciously at me and said yes. I asked whether he had mentioned anything unusual. No. Anything about yesterday? Her mouth twitched. There. I put down my toast. Pandora immediately pointed her spoon at me. “Don’t.” I reminded her that I hadn’t done anything. “You’re about to.” I told her she didn’t know that. “Yes, I do.” This was becoming a recurring problem in our relationship. Pandora had developed an alarming ability to identify my intentions before I had formally committed to them. Two days ago she had predicted that I would investigate the displaced garden gnome. Yesterday she had identified my interest in Mrs Jenkins’ shopping-list doodles before I had explained it. Now she apparently knew I was about to ask what John had said simply by looking at my face. Either I had become extraordinarily predictable or Pandora was working with a level of information I did not possess. Neither possibility was especially comforting.
I sat across from her and asked, “Did John say something about me?” Pandora pressed her lips together. That was not a no. I said her name. She shook her head. I asked what he had said. “Nothing.” I pointed out that she was doing the thing. She asked what thing. “The thing where you say nothing when something clearly happened.” Pandora looked down at her cereal. Her shoulders moved. At first I thought she had sighed. Then they moved again. She was laughing. Quietly. I stared at her. “Are you laughing?” She said no. I told her she was. That made it worse. Pandora covered her mouth with one hand and tried to compose herself while I sat across from her waiting for an explanation. Mr Whiskers, apparently interpreting the interruption as an opportunity, placed one paw against Pandora’s leg. She ignored him. He placed the other paw beside it and stretched upward toward the table. I moved the cereal bowl farther from the edge. “Stay focused,” I told him. Pandora laughed harder. I was now reasonably certain John was responsible.
I got up and carried my plate to the sink, deciding I would not participate further. If Pandora wanted to tell me what John had said, she could tell me. I wasn’t going to spend the morning analyzing facial expressions, reconstructing conversations, or contacting John for corroboration. That would have been exactly the sort of unnecessary escalation I had been trying to eliminate from my life. I rinsed my plate, put it in the dishwasher, and noticed Pandora watching me. I asked what she wanted. “Nothing.” Again. I turned back toward the sink. Behind me, Pandora made a small choking sound. I spun around. She was laughing into her hand. “Okay. What did he say?” I asked. “Nothing.” I said her name. “I promised I wouldn’t tell you.” That changed everything. I slowly turned around. “You promised John you wouldn’t tell me?” She immediately realized her mistake. I could see it happen. “That’s not what I meant.” I pointed out that it was exactly what she had said. Pandora assured me it wasn’t serious. I reminded her that I hadn’t said it was serious. “You’re making the face.” I asked what face. “The investigation face.” I didn’t know I had an investigation face. Apparently I now had several specialized expressions that everyone except me could identify.
I sat back down, and Pandora finally sighed. “Fine.” I waited. “When John came in this morning, he asked me how the investigation was going.” I frowned and asked what investigation. Pandora looked at me. “The shopping list?” She nodded. I immediately clarified that the shopping list had not been an investigation. Pandora said she knew. I pointed out that she was laughing again. “I’m sorry.” She was not sorry. Pandora explained that John had apparently spent part of yesterday evening thinking about our conversation regarding Mrs Jenkins’ shopping list. Specifically, he had been amused by the fact that I had asked him for an “independent assessment” of the doodles without telling him what I thought they meant. When he arrived this morning, he asked Pandora whether I had finished “decoding the grocery conspiracy.” Pandora had told him everything had been explained. John then asked whether I had accepted the explanation. I waited and asked what she had told him. “Mostly.” That was fair. I asked what John had said after that, and this was apparently the part she had been trying not to repeat because she immediately started laughing again. Finally, she wiped her eyes and said, “He said Mrs Jenkins should start writing her lists in invisible ink just to keep you busy.”
I stared at her and considered the statement carefully. “That wouldn’t work.” Pandora stopped laughing long enough to ask why. I explained that invisible ink requires a revealing agent, and if the paper looked blank, I wouldn’t automatically know there was writing on it. Pandora stared at me. Then she put her head down on the table. This reaction seemed excessive. Mr Whiskers took advantage of the situation and moved toward the cereal bowl. I intercepted him approximately two inches from the milk. “No.” He looked at me. “You’re not involved.” Pandora made another noise against the table. I picked up Mr Whiskers and placed him on the floor. He immediately sat beside Pandora’s chair again and stared at the bowl. There was no coded behavior. No emotional warning system. No feline espionage. He simply wanted cereal milk. John had not said anything cruel to Pandora. He had not upset her. There was no secret conversation about our relationship, no problem she was afraid to discuss, and no larger issue hiding beneath the silence. John had made a joke about me, Pandora had promised not to repeat it, and she had spent breakfast trying not to laugh whenever she looked at me.
Everything had a reasonable explanation. I should have felt relieved. Instead, one part bothered me. “How did John know about the flower?” Pandora lifted her head and asked what flower. “The flower on the shopping list.” She reminded me that he had seen the list yesterday. I agreed, but asked whether she had told him I thought it matched the gnome. Pandora became very still. I noticed. She noticed me noticing. “No.” I leaned forward and said her name. “No.” I pointed out that I didn’t remember telling John about that part. “Eat your toast.” I reminded her that I had already finished it. “Make more.” That was evasive. Pandora stood, picked up her cereal bowl, and carried it to the sink. Mr Whiskers followed her immediately. I watched both of them. She rinsed the bowl. Mr Whiskers sat beside her feet. I said her name again. “No.” I told her I only had one question. “No.” I assured her it wasn’t an investigation. She turned around. I reconsidered. “It’s a clarification.” Pandora walked out of the kitchen. Mr Whiskers followed her.
I remained at the table. Fine. John had made a joke. Pandora had found it funny. Mr Whiskers wanted milk. There was no mystery, nobody was upset, and absolutely nothing suspicious had happened. Except somehow John knew more about yesterday’s shopping-list incident than I remembered telling him. I looked toward the doorway where Pandora and Mr Whiskers had disappeared, then looked at my phone. I wasn’t going to call John. That would be ridiculous. I picked up the phone anyway. Not to call him. Just to see if he’d texted.
There’s a difference.