The Better Liar(25)

That night, having gone to bed earlier than I ordinarily did, I’d woken up alone at half midnight. The other bed was empty, Leslie off doing whatever it was she did without me. Instantly I was filled with outrage. Probably she was watching television on the tiny screen in the garage, or was in my parents’ bedroom, trying on my mother’s things. I jiggled the doorknob, but it was locked from the outside, something Leslie often did when she wanted me to stay out of her business.

    I resolved to wait up for her. I thought about folding myself into a ball of blankets at the bottom of her bed and seizing her toes as soon as she got into bed, but I had done that once already, so the sheen had come off. Instead I rolled under her bed, which was taller than mine and could fit a broad-shouldered five-year-old. I’d let her discover my empty bed and fear the worst. I’d come out when she was good and sorry she’d left me out of her surreptitious adventure.

Arms reached out and grabbed me as soon as I rolled under the dust ruffle. I screamed. Leslie clutched me to her and put her hand over my mouth, and I sagged into her embrace.

“What are you doing under the bed?” I said into her fingers, drooling not a little. I hoped she wouldn’t ask me what I was doing there.

She nodded at an overturned water glass on the carpet. Inside it, something went tink, tink, tink, as if about to make a speech at a wedding. Its shape stretched and shrank as it moved around, bent this way and that by the curvature of the glass. I reached for it and she slapped my hand away.

“What is it?” I whispered, annoyed.

Her eyes didn’t leave the glass. “A mouse.”

“Oh.” I twisted around to look at her. “What are you going to do with it?”

“I’m waiting.”

“For what?”

“For it to die.”

“Why?”

“I kept hearing it under my bed at night. I thought I would trap it, and then…” My body was propping the dust ruffle open, letting the light from the nightlight under the bed. I could see the flutter of her lashes as she blinked rapidly, and her body against mine was as hot as a coal.

    The doorknob rattled and the door burst open. I froze in place.

“Robin?” Grandma Betty said, flicking on the light. “Leslie? What are you doing under there?”

The dust ruffle had given me away. I rolled out resignedly. Leslie followed, mouseless.

“Why were you out of bed? What was all the noise about?”

“It was a mouse!” I blurted.

“A mouse game,” Leslie said. “Robin pretends to be a mouse and crawls under my bed, and I have to catch her.”

Grandma Betty seemed to swell. “Your father has to get up for work in the morning.”

“I know. It was all my fault,” Leslie said. “I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to play the game.”

Grandma Betty adjusted her translucent nightgown. Through it I could see her cotton underwear with the lace stitching around the waistband. “Kitchen floors tomorrow, and silverware, Leslie. Don’t make another noise.”

She shut the door and locked it behind her, plunging us into nightlight-gloom again.

“Leslie?” I whispered.

Leslie got out of her bed and climbed into mine, stroking my hair. I fell asleep before I could remember what I had wanted to say, listening to the tink, tink, tink from underneath Leslie’s bed.

In the morning she was already in the shower before I woke up. I got on my hands and knees and crawled under the bed. The overturned glass was still there; I supposed Leslie had been too scared to do anything about it. I gave the glass a sharp poke and it tipped over onto the carpet. The mouse was revealed. A girl mouse, gray and cream, with long silver whiskers. It was too exhausted to run; it only dug its claws into the carpet and twitched. I picked it up by its tail and put it in my backpack to take to school with me.

“What did you do with it?” she asked that night, when we were again in bed.

“With what?” I said.

She closed her mouth. I never caught her under the bed again.





18


    Mary


The crazy thing is that I woke up with a big smile on my face. I couldn’t help it. I’d slept so good in Leslie’s ginormous memory-foam bed, and there were wooden hangers for my five articles of clothing in the closet, and rose-scented tissues on the nightstand…and I was free. I didn’t have work in the morning. I didn’t have a boyfriend. I didn’t even have to answer to my own name.

Leslie’s voice filtered into my consciousness as I squirmed around in the bed, testing how it was possible that I could be comfortable in literally every position. She was on the landing, talking to someone. Dave’s voice, low. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Go on, go to work.” A kiss, then his shoes on the stairs. Her voice again: “Hi, Diego. Just calling to say I’m not feeling well today. I’m going to stay home for now.” A beat. “Yeah. I’m going to try to work on it this afternoon if the medicine kicks in…Okay. See you.”

I frowned. The front door had shut halfway through her conversation, and she’d still faked the whole thing, like Dave might be able to hear her through the wall.

In the other room, the baby began to cry. I rolled over, giving up on going back to sleep. Also, I hadn’t bothered to take a shower last night and I was sort of grossing myself out.