The Last House on Needless Street(45)

There is no blood anywhere else in the kitchen. I am sure of that. In fact, it is unusually clean. I can smell bleach. Now, that is really weird, because Ted never cleans.

Are you there? I ask.

His eyes glow green in the darkness. Is it my time?

No.

Maybe it is. He comes forward, a little playful, trying to take control. I fight him back – but honestly, it is more difficult than I remember. Is he getting stronger?

Did you … I pause and lick my chops. My tongue feels kind of dry and woody. Did we hurt Lauren?

No, he says, and there comes that dark ripple through my body that happens when Nighttime laughs. Of course not.

Phew. But my relief can only be short-lived. Then why, I ask Nighttime, is there a bloody flip-flop under the refrigerator?

He shrugs, and the whole inside of my mind moves up and down like the swell of the ocean. Hurt herself? he suggests. Kids.

Maybe, I say. But why hasn’t she been around lately?

Not my job to explain things to you, he says. Ask someone else. He turns to go back into the dark.

Well, what a gd help you are! I shout after him. Who the hell else am I supposed to ask?

I don’t feel reassured. The opposite, actually. Nighttime was so strong. The hair stands up on the ruff of my neck.

Ted sways into the kitchen. The light blazes up. I hadn’t realised it had gotten dark.

‘What have you found?’ He takes the bloody little flip-flop from me, and goes still, looking at it. ‘I thought I threw that away,’ he says. ‘Why won’t it stay gone? I don’t want it down here, I don’t want you to see it.’ He puts the flip-flop in his pocket and picks me up. His breath is a warm blast through my fur. I writhe and scream but it’s no good.

He puts me in the crate. The lid comes down. I hear him piling things on top. He NEVER does that while I am in here. I row politely, because clearly there has been some kind of mistake. I won’t be able to get out. But he carries on. Ted is trapping me! Why would he do that?

I row and row, but I am answered by silence. Ted is gone. He has locked me here in the dark. I try not to panic. He’ll get over it and let me out. Besides, I love my crate, don’t I?

I can’t sleep. Every so often I twitch awake, convinced there is someone in here with me. I feel them along my side, stirring in the dark.





Ted





I cannot remember exactly how old I was when I realised that my Mommy was beautiful. No more than five, I think. I understood it not by looking at her but from the other kids’ and parents’ expressions. When she picked me up from school the parking lot was always full, and they all looked.

It gave me complicated feelings. It was obvious that the other mommies weren’t like her. My mommy had smooth skin and big eyes that seemed to see only you when they looked. She didn’t wear big jeans or sweaters. She wore a blue dress with a skirt that swished about her calves like the sea, or sometimes sheer blouses, which showed glimpses of the warm shadowed caverns of her. She spoke really softly and gently, she never yelled like other moms. Her pointed consonants and flat vowels were exotic. I was proud that they looked at her. But the glances also made a little hot place in my belly fire up. I both wanted them to look and didn’t. It was better after I started taking the bus.

I was protective of her at school. But I was always most jealous when Mommy came home from her shift. I was scared that all the other kids she looked after at the hospital would use her up and there would be nothing left for me.

In a way, that was what happened. She was heartbroken when they let her go. There were cutbacks everywhere, everyone knew that. Money was tight. Daddy told me to keep out of Mommy’s hair. She needed some space, he said. And she did seem diminished, somehow. Her easy glow was dimmed. I was fourteen or so then, maybe.

The Chihuahua lady and Mommy were tight. Every morning, if they weren’t on shift, Mommy would walk over to her house. They would drink black coffee and smoke Virginia Slims and talk. If it was nice they sat on the screen porch. If it was dull or cold, which it usually was, they sat at the dinner table until the air grew so thick with smoke and secrets that you could have sliced it with a knife. I knew all this because sometimes on the weekends they lost track of time and I had to go fetch Mommy to make lunch. Maybe it was only opening jars of baby food, but it was still women’s work, Daddy said. He was drinking a lot by then.

After Mommy was fired the Chihuahua lady was outraged, way more upset than Mommy. Chihuahua lady tried to get her to fight it. ‘You’re the best,’ she said. ‘You have such a way with the kids. They’re crazy to lose you. It’s a crime.’ Her wide brown eyes were pools of belief. The Chihuahua lady always hummed with energy. ‘You can write to the hospital board,’ she said to Mommy. ‘Come on. You can’t take it lying down. You are an asset.’

Daddy and I both echoed her. ‘You’re the best, Mommy,’ I said. ‘They don’t know how good they have it with you.’

‘It’s just the way of things,’ Mommy said in her gentle way. ‘You accept misfortune with grace.’

My problems at school had already started, but my parents had not yet begun to take them seriously. I guess I was so well behaved at home, they must have thought there was some mistake. I was helpful and polite, or at least I always tried to be. ‘Teddy seems to have skipped being a teenager,’ Mommy would say, stroking my cheek. ‘We are lucky.’