The Last House on Needless Street(83)

But I wasn’t strong enough. Ted had too good a hold on me. I had to make the cat do it. And that’s how we come to be where we are.





Ted





She must have suspected that it was all about to come down around her. The police had come to the hospital, to Mommy’s old work, asking questions. The children at the kindergarten where she worked now had got so clumsy. Previously Teddy had been the clumsiest and she had saved the big stuff, the stuff that left marks, for him. But recently Teddy wasn’t enough any more. There were too many children being stitched up who hadn’t fallen down.

Mommy had taken a long time to fix me, the night before. I was still shivering in the aftershock. I came into the kitchen for a glass of water. Mommy was standing on her tiptoes on a chair. She had a length of laundry line in her hands. On rainy days like today Mommy ran the washing line across the kitchen, to dry her stockings. Not pantyhose, she would never wear that.

‘Teddy,’ she said. ‘You are tall. Help me get this up here. The goddamn thing won’t go over the beam.’ It was funny to hear her swear in that elegant, accented voice. I climbed up on the chair and threw the line over the crossbeam.

‘Thank you,’ she said, formally. ‘Now go and get some ice cream from the store.’ I looked at her, startled. We had ice cream once a year, on her birthday.

‘But it will rot our teeth,’ I said.

‘Please do not argue with me, Theodore. When you get back, there will be some chores for you. Can you remember everything I am about to say? You must not write it down. And I am going out almost immediately, so I will not be able to tell you again.’

‘I think I can remember,’ I said.

‘There is something I need you to dispose of. I will leave it here, in the kitchen. You must take it out to the woods. You will have to wait until dark to remove it from the house, because you are not allowed to bury things in the woods.’

‘Yes, Mommy,’ I said. She gave me ten dollars, way too much for ice cream.

As I closed the front door behind me I heard her say, in a low voice, ‘Ya, ma ankou.’ It was all getting weirder and weirder.

I got vanilla ice cream. That was the only flavour she liked. I can still feel the numbness of my fingertips where they met the cold tub, see the delicate sediment of ice that covered the lid.

I come into the kitchen and see her. In a way, it is all I have seen, ever since. The sight is inside my eyelids. My mother is floating in air, swaying gently. She is a dreadful pendulum. The laundry line creaks as she moves. Her teeth bite her blue lower lip as if caught in a last moment of doubt.

Her favourite possessions are stacked neatly by her drifting feet. Her little vanity case, packed with the gauzy blue dress, her nightgown, perfume. Her soft suede handbag, the colour of a doe’s belly. A note lies on the case, in her formal French schoolchild’s copperplate. To be taken to the woods, it says.

I had to wait until night. She had told me that. But I did not want to leave her hanging there. I was afraid someone would knock on the door and insist on coming in. Then they would see her. I was not afraid of getting in trouble. But she looked so exposed up there, with her twisted blue face. I did not want other eyes on her.

So I took her down. It was difficult to touch her. She was still warm. I folded her up small and put her in the cupboard beneath the sink. ‘Sorry,’ I said to her, again and again. I cleaned the floor, which had mess on it beneath where she had hung.

I wanted to send all her clothes with her, but I couldn’t find her big suitcase. I did my best by adding a couple of things to the little overnight vanity – everyday things she might need in the woods. I put in her suture kit. I packed the copy of Aesop’s Fables that lay by her bed. She could never fall asleep without a book and I worried about her, lying wakeful in the cold forest.

Night came like a blanket. I put Mommy and her things on my back, and carried her into the trees. She had grown stiff and clammy. Things seeped out of her. She would have hated that. I knew I needed to get her to the forest. As soon as we were under the trees I felt better.

She seemed to grow heavier as we went through the night forest. I gasped and stumbled. My spine felt as though it were being crushed, my knees trembled. I welcomed those things. It was right that this should be a difficult journey.

I buried her in the centre of the glade, near Snowball the mouse. I buried her blue dress in the south corner, her favourite leather handbag to the west, her perfume in the east. As the earth took each thing it became a god. As I laid her down in the hole I felt the earth take her in its arms. ‘I hold you in my heart,’ I whispered. She started to transform. The white trees watched like a hundred eyes.

Lauren whispered in my ear, ‘Get in. We can lie down with her.’

For a moment I thought about it. But then I remembered that if I died, Olivia died too, and Lauren and Nighttime, and the little ones. And I found that I didn’t want to do it.

When all the gods were safely in their homes I piled earth back on top of them. Even after they were buried I could still feel them radiating. They shone without light beneath the earth.

Mommy had acted just in time. The police came two days later. I stood outside, under a sun like a burning star. I became a picture for the man for the newspaper. When they searched the house they found nothing, of course. There was a case missing, and some clothes.