The Other Mrs.(58)

When he returns, Tate chants, “Statue game, statue game,” over and over again until I’m forced to admit that I don’t know what this statue game is. That I’ve never played it before, that I’ve never heard of it.

It’s then that he snaps and calls me a liar. “Mommy is a liar!” is what he screams, taking my breath away. He says, “Yes, you do!” as his crocodile tears turn to real tears. “You do know what it is, you liar.”

I should reprimand him, I know. But I’m speechless and stunned. For the next few seconds, I can’t find the words to speak as Tate scampers from the room, bare feet sliding on the wooden floors. Before I can catch my breath, he’s gone. In the next room, I hear his body drop to the ground. He’s thrown himself down somewhere, as limp as the doll. I do nothing.

Will steps closer, his hand brushing the hair from my eyes. I close my eyes and lean into his touch. “Maybe a warm bath would help you relax?” he suggests, and it’s only then that I remember I haven’t showered today. That instead I’m wet through from the run in the rain. My clothes, my hair have yet to completely dry. There’s a smell to me. It’s not a good one.

“Take your time,” Will tells me. “Tate and I will be fine. I’ll take care of this,” he says, and I feel grateful for that. That Will will clean up this mess I’ve made with Tate. By the time I return from my bath, everything will be as good as new.

On the way upstairs I call back to Tate that we’ll play something just as soon as I’m through. “Okay, buddy?” I ask, leaning over the banister where I see him, body thrown across the arm of the sofa, tears seeping into the marigold fabric. If he hears me, he makes no reply.

Beneath my feet, the steps creak. Upstairs in the hall, I find the sheets stripped from the beds, just where I left them. I’ll replace them later, put them back on the beds just as dirty as they were when I took them off.

The darkness of the outside world seeps into the home, making it hard to believe it’s not the middle of the night. I flip a light in the hallway on, but then just as quickly turn it off, on the off chance that someone is standing in the street, staring through the windows at Will, Tate and me.



MOUSE


Not long after they brought Bert the guinea pig home, he started getting fat. So fat that he could barely move. He spent his days laid out, flat on his big belly like a parachute. Her father and Fake Mom told Mouse she was feeding him too many carrots. That was why he was getting fat. But Mouse couldn’t help herself. Bert loved those carrots. He made a squealing sound every time Mouse brought him some. Even though she knew she shouldn’t, she kept on feeding him the carrots.

But then one day, Bert gave birth to babies. That was how Mouse knew that Bert wasn’t a boy after all, but that he was a girl, because she knew enough to know that boys don’t have babies. Those babies must have already been inside Bert when they got her from the pet store. Mouse wasn’t sure how to take care of guinea pig babies, but it didn’t matter because none of those babies survived. Not a single one.

Mouse cried. She didn’t like to see anything get hurt. She didn’t like to see anything die.

Mouse told her real mom what happened to Bert’s babies. She told her what those babies looked like when they were born and how hard it was for Bert to get those babies out of her insides. She asked her mother how those babies got inside of Bert, but Mouse’s real mom didn’t say. She asked her father, too. He told her he’d tell her another day, when she was older. But Mouse didn’t want to know another day. She wanted to know that day.

Fake Mom told her that it was probably Bert’s fault those babies died, because Bert didn’t take care of them like a good mom should. But Mouse’s father said to her in private that it wasn’t really Bert’s fault, because Bert probably just didn’t know any better because she had never been a mom before. And sometimes these things happen for no reason at all.

They scooped up what was left of the babies and buried them in one big hole in the backyard. Mouse laid a carrot on top, just in case they would have liked carrots as much as Bert liked carrots.

But Mouse saw the look on Fake Mom’s face. She was happy those babies were dead. Mouse thought that maybe Fake Mom had something to do with Bert’s babies dying. Because she didn’t like having one rodent in the house, let alone five or six. She said that to Mouse all the time.

Mouse couldn’t help but think that it was Fake Mom who made Bert’s babies die, rather than Bert. But she didn’t dare say this because she guessed there’d be hell to pay for that, too.

  Mouse learned a lot about animals from watching them through her bedroom window. She’d sit on the window seat and stare out into the trees that surrounded her house. There were lots of trees in the yard, which meant lots of animals. Because, as Mouse knew from the books she read, the trees had things that animals needed, like shelter and food. The trees made the animals come. Mouse was thankful for the trees.

Mouse learned how the animals got along with one another. She learned what they ate. She learned that they all had a way of protecting themselves from the mean animals who wanted to hurt them. The rabbits, for example, ran real fast. They also had a way of snaking around the yard, never going in a straight line, which made it hard for the neighbor’s cat to catch up with them. Mouse played that out in her bedroom sometimes. She ran in a zigzag, leaping from desk to bed, pretending that someone or something was coming at her from behind and she was trying to get away.