Alternate Side(61)

“So now we’re on top of the situation,” George said triumphantly the morning after the Health Department visit, when he ran into Nora. He seemed to be baiting her, trying to tell her how many litters a year, how many babies in the litter. She was accustomed to George’s nonsense, but she had found Dino Forletti disconcerting. He seemed more agnostic about rats than Nora would have expected, or appreciated. She couldn’t imagine anyone talking about how termites built their homes, or what stamina cockroaches had. “Live and let live” had been his valedictory words.

When Nora got to her office, she went down to the basement, the bowels of the building, to the windowless office where Declan, the facilities manager, sat in front of a wall of grainy security monitors. Declan was a small, very precise ginger-haired man with leprechaun tendencies so obvious that Bebe had signed off on his hiring with the words “I hope the road-show production of Finian’s Rainbow where you found him won’t want him back.”

“Declan, do we have rats?” Nora asked. Even the word made her shiver.

“To my knowledge we have never seen a rat inside this building,” Declan said, his brogue making the horrid word sound like a small throat clearing.

“Thank God,” Nora said, turning to go.

“Is this about the charge for the exterminator in my monthly budget?”

“What? No.”

“Because he does come on a regular basis. This is New York City. We are near the river. I have to be prepared for every contingency. It would be a disaster if one of those ladies saw a wee beastie.”

“Stop,” Nora said.

Nora had been delighted to discover that Richard, too, had a rat thing. “Mrs. Nolan, no offense, but can we not talk about this?” he’d said. “Absolutely,” Nora said. Charity did not want to discuss it, either, except to say that on her island there were no rats or snakes because the mongoose killed them all, and that there would be no rats on the block if only Mr. Fisk had not attempted to, in Charity’s words, “bash Ricky’s whole head in.”

“I just had a drink with Jack,” Charlie said one night. “He says Charity hates him. He says Charity is why Grace quit.”

“You went over to see Jack?” Nora said. “Did he tell you that he refused to write Grace a recommendation after twenty-one years?” Which had been immaterial, because Sherry had written a fulsome recommendation, according to Charity, and Grace was already working for a couple who lived on Central Park South and, according to Charity, were paying her more for less work.

“Don’t start with me about Jack. And tell Charity to leave the Fisks alone.” Nora would do no such thing, although she felt a slight spasm of sympathy for Sherry. Having Charity angry at you was like being caught in a thunderstorm.

Charlie didn’t know about the men in the SRO or the dog leavings, which had stopped all winter long and now had appeared again. But George had told him all about the rats, and Nora suspected that Charlie was glad of the news. He was certain there were no rats in gated communities in North Carolina. “I bet there are lots of snakes,” Nora had muttered to herself.

“You’re not really moving, are you?” Rachel, home for a few days, had said that morning.

“What do you think?” Nora said as she packed up her tote bag and waited for Rachel to find her jacket, which was somehow under the coffee table in the den, and was somehow actually Nora’s jacket.

“I think Daddy is a little crazy for some reason. I think pretending he believed Mr. Fisk’s ridiculous story made him crazy. I also think if you move to the places he’s talking about moving you’ll scarcely ever see me because why would I go there?”

“I hope you told him that,” Nora said as they left the house.

“Are we getting a cab?” Rachel said.

“I always walk,” Nora said.

“Okay,” Rachel said.

“It’s a long walk,” Nora said, and Rachel just shrugged, which was how Nora knew that something was up. Even if Rachel was amenable to a walk, tradition would dictate that she should argue about it: a cab was more comfortable, what about the subway, no one else walked to work, whatever.

“Doesn’t she know that she’s only feeding rats?” Rachel said when they came upon the woman with the baguettes, surrounded by a gaggle of geese and a cloud of rapacious gulls.

Nora shivered. She could still see the rat in the Lessmans’ stairwell, the shadow of its long, hairless tail. Rachel was almost as crazed about rats as her mother. “I don’t get you guys,” Oliver had once said; he had spent a good deal of time with lab rats. “I bet if you got to actually hold and watch rats you would get over this.”

“Are you insane?” Rachel said.

“What she said,” Nora added.

“Okay, Mommy, no, don’t try to be cool,” Rachel said. “It’s so so sad when you do that.”

The pieces of French bread hit the ruffled gray water and then were hidden beneath the flapping wings and snaking necks. A spring breeze was blowing Nora’s hair around her face, and Rachel’s hands were pushed deep into the pockets of the leather jacket she’d worn despite the fact that Nora had told her she would need a heavier coat. True spring came a little later right along the river. Two windsurfers in wet suits went by, waving at them. “Insane,” Rachel said.