The Other Mrs.(59)

Other animals, Mouse saw, used camouflage. They blended right into their surroundings. Brown squirrels on brown trees, white rabbits in white snow. Mouse tried that, too. She dressed in her red-and-pink-striped shirt, lay on her rag rug, which was also red and striped. There she made believe she was invisible on account of her camouflage, that if someone came into the room they’d step right on her because they couldn’t see her lying here.

Other animals played dead or fought back. Still others came out only at night so they wouldn’t be seen. Mouse never saw those animals. She was asleep when they came out. But in the morning, Mouse would see their tracks across the snow or dirt. That’s how she’d know they’d been there.

Mouse tried that, too. She tried to be nocturnal.

She left her bedroom, and tiptoed around her house when she thought her father and Fake Mom were asleep. Her father and Fake Mom slept in her father’s room on the first floor. Mouse didn’t like how Fake Mom slept in her father’s bed. Because that was her father’s bed, not Fake Mom’s. Fake Mom should get her own bed, in her own bedroom, in her own house. That’s what Mouse thought.

But the night Mouse was nocturnal, Fake Mom was not asleep in her father’s bed. That’s how she knew that Fake Mom didn’t always sleep, that sometimes she was nocturnal, too. Because sometimes she stood at the kitchen counter with not one light on, talking to herself, though never anything sensible, but just a bunch of poppycock. Mouse said nothing at all when she found Fake Mom awake like that, but quietly turned and tiptoed back the way she came from and went to sleep.

Of all the animals, Mouse liked the birds the best, because there were so many different kinds of birds. Mouse liked that they mainly all got along, all except for the hawk who tried to eat the rest of them, which she didn’t think was nice.

But Mouse also thought that was kind of how people are, how they mainly get along except for a few who try to hurt everyone else.

Mouse decided that she didn’t like the hawk, because the hawk was ruthless and sneaky and mean. It didn’t care what it ate, even if it was baby birds. Especially, sometimes, if it was baby birds because they didn’t have it in them to fight back. They were an easy target. The hawk had good eyesight, too. Even when you didn’t think it was watching, it was, like it had eyes on the back of its head.

In time Mouse came to think of Fake Mom a little bit like that hawk. Because she started picking on Mouse more and more when her father went to his other office, or when he was talking on the phone behind the closed door. Fake Mom knew that Mouse was like one of those baby birds who couldn’t defend herself in the same way a mom or dad bird could. It wasn’t as if Fake Mom tried to eat Mouse like the hawks tried to eat the baby birds. This was different, more subtle. Bumping Mouse with her elbow when she passed by. Stealing the last of the Salerno Butter Cookies from Mouse’s plate. Saying, at every chance she could, how much she hated mice. How mice are dirty little rodents.

  Mouse and her father spent a lot of time together before Fake Mom arrived. He taught her how to play catch, how to throw a curveball, how to slide into second base with a pop-up slide. They watched old black-and-white movies together. They played games, Monopoly and card games and chess. They even had their very own made-up game that didn’t have a name, just one of those things they came up with on a rainy afternoon. They’d stand in the living room, spin in circles until they were both dizzy. When they stopped, they froze in place, holding whatever silly position they landed in. The first to move was the loser, which was usually Mouse’s father because he moved on purpose so that Mouse could win, same as he did with Monopoly and chess.

Mouse and her father liked to go camping. When the weather was nice they’d load their tent and supplies into the back of her father’s car and drive into the woods. There, Mouse would help her father pitch the tent and gather sticks for a campfire. They’d roast marshmallows over the fire. Mouse liked it best when they were crispy and brown on the outside, but mushy and white inside.

But Fake Mom didn’t like for Mouse and her father to go camping. Because when they did, they were gone all night. Fake Mom didn’t like to be left alone. She wanted Mouse’s father home with her. When she saw Mouse and her father in the garage, gathering up the tent and the sleeping bags, she’d press in close to him in that way that made Mouse uncomfortable. She’d lay her hand on Mouse’s dad’s chest and nuzzle her nose into his neck like she was smelling it. Fake Mom would hug and kiss him, and tell Mouse’s father how lonely she was when he was away, how she got scared at night when she was the only one home.

Mouse’s father would put the tent away, tell Mouse, Another time. But Mouse was a smart girl. She knew that Another time really meant Never.



SADIE


I step into an exam room to find Officer Berg waiting for me.

He isn’t sitting on the exam table when I come in, as other patients would do. Instead, he ambles around the room, tinkering with things. He lifts the lids off the sundry jars, steps on the foot pedal of the stainless-steel garbage.

As I watch, he helps himself to a pair of latex gloves, and I say, “Those aren’t free, you know?”

Officer Berg stuffs the gloves back into the cardboard box, saying, “You caught me,” as he goes on to explain how his grandson likes to make balloons with them.

“You’re not feeling well, Officer?” I ask as I close the door behind myself and reach for his file, only to find the plastic box where we leave them empty. My question is rhetorical, it seems. It comes to me quite quickly then that Officer Berg is feeling fine. That he doesn’t have an appointment, but that he’s here to speak with me.