Braided Essay Exercise: A Cat-like Affair

3 threads:
-cat
-marble
-school teacher

1st sentence is from Thackeray’s Vanity Fair

“Married! Married!” Rebecca said, in an agony of tears – her voice choking with emotion, her handkerchief up to her ready eyes, fainting against the mantelpiece – a figure of woe fit to melt the most obdurate heart. Hardly in a steady state of mind myself, I stood up to calm her. “Now, we mustn’t despair, Rebecca,” I consoled her as I sat her down in an armchair. “But a scandal, yes. An affair with her student!”

An affair, in nature, can be likened to a cat. A kitten, perhaps, in its early stages. Playful. Bemused. Curious.

He examined the glass marbles. “A collection?” he asked. “My grandpa’s,” she replied, “Not mine.” He looked fondly down at the ring on her finger. “I love marbles,” he said. Then, for clarification, “The game.”

Curious, it bats at the ball of yarn. Finds the loose end and holds on, somehow. The cat pulls and plays until it becomes entangled in strings – caught before it knows it.

Of course he does, she thought. She crossed the room, rearranging things as she went. He’s still a child. She bent over her coffee table and sifted through the pile of ungraded papers. Somewhere among them, his name flashed up at her.

Rebecca fell into a fresh fit of tears. “And to an American, no less!” She blew her nose loudly into her wet handkerchief. I handed her mine, which had managed to stay reasonably dry, and she took it without much acknowledgement. “He’ll make her stay in that cruel land and I shall never see her again! And a scandal…” She shook her head resignedly. “A mess, Martha. That’s what this is. A great mess.”

The cat, realizing it is entangled, begins to struggle. But it is wound in indifferent yarn.

A clash of breaking glass came from behind her and she wrenched her eyes from his name to turn in the direction of the sound. But marbles don’t shatter, she thought as she stared at the broken fragments littered across the floor.