The Last House on Needless Street(23)

Lauren had been running a low-grade fever for some days. I wanted to get her antibiotics but I didn’t know how. A doctor would never understand our situation. I hoped maybe she would get better on her own, but days went by and she didn’t. In fact she got worse. I looked on the internet and I found a free clinic on the far side of town.

‘How do you feel?’ I asked Lauren. ‘Tell me exactly.’

‘I’m hot,’ she said. ‘There are bugs crawling on my skin. I can’t think. All I want to do is sleep. Even talking to you makes me tired.’ There was a little rasp in her voice. I listened very carefully to everything she said. I wrote it down and put the paper in my pocket.

After dark I walked into the city to the free clinic.

It took them a couple hours to see me but I didn’t mind. The waiting room was bare and smelled somewhat like urine. But it was quiet. I settled in for some time with my thoughts. As I have said, I do some of my best thinking in waiting rooms.

When the angry lady called my name I took the note out of my pocket. I read it three times. I hoped I could remember it all. Then I went to a cubicle with a tired doctor in it. He asked me about my symptoms. I put a little rasp into my voice and spoke slowly. ‘I’m hot,’ I said. ‘There are bugs crawling on my skin. I can’t think. All I want to do is sleep. Even talking to you makes me tired.’ I repeated what Lauren had said. I was word perfect. And it worked! He prescribed me antibiotics and bed rest. I went to the little pharmacy next door and filled the prescription. I was so relieved I almost danced in the aisles. I kept my head up as I walked back – I let myself watch the world around me. I saw a pretty neon sign with a flower on it, a stall selling fruit shaped like stars. I saw a woman with a tiny black dog in a big red handbag. I kept a tight hold of the paper bag with the antibiotics in it.

When I reached my street I was very tired. I had walked ten miles or more, to the clinic and back. I gave Lauren the antibiotics by hiding them in her food. She got better quickly after that. My plan worked!

When things with Lauren got bad I knew I had to get some answers. Not about her body but her mind. So that’s how I got the idea to go to the bug man and pretend to talk about myself, while really asking him questions about Lauren. It’s just like when I got the antibiotics except this time the medicine is information.

I come back. I am on my street. The house in front of me is yellow with green trim. I am in front of the Chihuahua lady’s house again, and that same feeling is in me too, like I almost know something. It’s like ants in my brain, marching with their little feet.

I see that there is something stapled to the telephone pole. I go to look, because it is usually a missing cat. Cats can seem very capable and independent, but they do need our help.

It is not a cat this time. One face is repeated in blurred photocopy into the distance, pole after pole. It takes me a moment before I am sure. She looks much younger, sure, and there’s no dog with her, but it’s the Chihuahua lady. In the picture she is leaning against a wall in a sunny place, smiling. She looks happy.

The last time there were flyers on the telephone poles it was Little Girl With Popsicle.

Lauren is waiting when I get in.

‘Where have you been?’ She is breathing too fast.

‘Calm down, kitten. You might pass out.’ It has happened before.

‘You are seeing a lady,’ she screams. ‘You’re going to leave me.’ She seizes my hand between her sharp teeth and bites.

Eventually I get her to sleep. I try to watch monster trucks but I am exhausted by the day. Feelings are hard.

I wake in the night-time, sudden and breathless. I feel the dark on my skin like a touch. The record player is supposed to be on constant repeat but it’s old now or maybe I did something wrong. In the silence, I can hear Lauren crawling across the floor. Her sharp little teeth click.

‘You bad man,’ she whispers. ‘Out, out, out.’

I try to soothe her and settle her again. She cries out and bites my hand again, this time drawing blood. She fights me, crying, all night.

I say, ‘Even if I were seeing someone, I would still love you best.’

I know immediately that was the wrong thing to say.

‘You are! You are!’ Lauren scratches and fights until morning leaks grey into the room.

I meet the day tired and bruised. Lauren sleeps late. I use the time to update the diary. This is a habit Mommy instilled in me.

One day a week, she examined the house from top to bottom. The examination must be made twice, she was very clear about that, because of human error. She missed nothing. Each speck of dust, each spider, each cracked tile. She recorded everything in the book. Then she gave the book to my daddy so he could fix it during the week. She called it her diary of broken things. Her English was very nearly perfect; it was always a surprise when she missed the shade of a word’s meaning. Daddy and I never corrected her.

So each Saturday morning after dawn, I take the book around the house. I do it again in the evening just before dusk. I do one circuit around the boundary of the property to make sure the fence is all good and so on, and then I come in for a tighter circle, to check the house for damage – loose nails, rat and snake holes, signs of termites, that kind of thing. It’s not complicated but, like I said, it’s important.

The three locks on the back door open loudly. Thunk, thunk, thunk. I wait. I never know what will wake Lauren. But she sleeps on. The day is blinding, the earth baked hard underfoot, cracked as old skin. The feeders hang empty. No breeze moves in the trees, each leaf is still and silent in the rotten heat. It is as if death has put its finger on the street and pinned it down. I lock the door again behind me and go to the tool shed around the side of the house.