The Last House on Needless Street(43)

There’s been no sign or scent of the TV ted with the eyes like dead blue coins. I think I let my imagination get the better of me, there. I do have such a rich and wonderful imagination, it’s not surprising that it went a little too far.

Everything would be perfect if the whine would get out of my head. It’s like an object lodged there, like a tintack or a knife. EEEEoooeeee.

I think I feel calm enough to consult with the Bible again. I am a little nervous, after last time – the house shook so hard. It was so scary I haven’t dared since. But I can’t leave it much longer. The LORD would not like that. I have to be brave! Wish me luck, tape machine!

I push the book off with my eyes tightly closed, braced for impact. But the crash and the tremors, when they come, are far away and deep in the earth. When the page falls open I read:

…if the salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.



I can smell the salt and fat, now. I race upstairs to find Ted. Sure enough, he is in bed, eating French fries with one hand. I leap on him with high abandon, landing foursquare on his belly. The lord never lets me down.

He gasps. ‘You startled me, kitten.’ He drops what he has been playing with in his other hand. A blue thing, too thin for a scarf, more like a silky necktie or something. I settle on his stomach for a purr. Ted and I are very happy together these days. Yes, I think everything is returning to normal.





Ted





The past is close tonight. The membrane of time bulges and strains. I hear Mommy in the kitchen, talking to the Chihuahua lady. Mommy’s telling her about the thing with the mouse. That was where all this started. I stop up my ears and turn the TV up, but I can still hear her voice. I remember everything about the thing with the mouse, which is unusual. My memory is Swiss cheese, in general.

Each homeroom had a pet. It was like a mascot. One homeroom had a startled-looking corn snake, which was so cool, and obviously better than a white mouse with bloody little eyes.

The kid with the moles was supposed to take the mouse home that weekend, but he hadn’t been in school on Friday. His mother said he had a cold but everyone knew that he was getting the moles on his face removed. Anyway he couldn’t take the mouse and I was next in the alphabet. Snowball, that was his name. The mouse, not the boy.

I took Snowball home. I had to sneak him into the house. Mommy would never have permitted it. Domesticated animals were slavery. Then the thing happened, and I did not bring him back on Monday.

I didn’t get in trouble. There was nothing anyone could do or say. It had been an accident, after all – the cage door had come loose. I was really upset about it, but there were other feelings, too, which were more pleasant. I had discovered a new part of myself. I remember the look in my teacher’s eye, that Monday. It had new reserve in it. He saw me for who I was. That I was dangerous.

Our homeroom got a hamster to replace Snowball. My teacher changed the system for taking the hamster home for weekends – it was random, now, pulled from a baseball cap. Somehow my name never came out of the hat. He became the principal, in the end, that homeroom teacher. It was years later, when I punched someone in the hall by my locker, that he found his chance. I can’t even remember who it was that I punched. Was it a punch, or a kick? But it was my third strike, that’s the point, and the school expelled me. I knew that teacher had been waiting for his chance to get me out, ever since the thing with the mouse.

I look at the cassette tapes. They sit in a neat row on the bookshelf. I think of the tape I hid in the hall closet. Maybe if I were braver I would listen. Her last words.

Thoughts are a door that the dead walk through. I feel her now, cold fingers walking up my neck. Mommy, please leave me alone.

I have to focus. I shake my hands loose and turn my palms upwards. I look at my hand – each finger, the pillowy base of the thumb, the palm as dry as leather. I take a deep breath for each part. This is something the bug man suggested I try, and surprisingly, it works.

I unlock the laptop cupboard and start the computer. The photograph of the man behind a desk comes up, grinning. It doesn’t look like a real picture at all. But if people are lonely enough, they don’t care about what’s real and what isn’t. Once again I feel bad for using a fake picture but no one would meet me if I used my own.

I look at the rows and rows of women. There are so many. The search hasn’t been going well but it’s important not to give up.

Maybe I’ve been doing this wrong. I’ve been focusing on butter-blonde hair and blue eyes and so on, whereas what I really need is someone with whom I have more in common. A single parent. I change my search and the faces disappear, replaced by new ones. These are older, mostly. I try a couple, but they seem more wary than women without children, less responsive.

Finally I find one. She’s willing to meet tonight. She answers quickly, within three seconds, which even I can tell is a mistake. It’s too eager. She will meet me at a coffee shop after work. She does look nice, actually. She has a soft face and her jawline is doughy. Her dye job is old, grey shows at the roots, interrupting the dull black. It’s late, but she’ll try to get her sister to babysit. She has a twelve-year-old daughter.

I have a daughter myself, I tell her. Lauren. What’s yours called?