Rodent (21 page)

He takes me to his room upstairs, one of two doors. The roof slopes in one place, making him duck his head. I note an attempt at making the bed—a wrinkled blanket pulled over the sheet. There’s a basket of clean folded laundry at my feet (his mom, I bet). Cluttered desk with a laptop wedged on it. In the corner, a set of weights and a bench.

“You work out?”

“Sometimes.” He shrugs, face red.

We face each other, eyes looking everywhere else. The poster over his bed is peeling away in one corner. Plaid curtains dangle from a thin rod.

“My mom’s still sleeping,” he finally says. “We should probably go downstairs.” Will’s mom is a nurse. She works mostly nights.

“Okay.” I’m the first out the door.

Last stop, the basement. The floor is covered in gaudy patterned carpet, and there are tiny windows above us.
Brown wallpaper. Will ducks his head. “The basement needs some work.” He folds a blanket left on the floor and looks over a few beanbag chairs and boxes in the corner. Taps his fingers against his leg. It’s funny to see him embarrassed about this. He should see some places I’ve lived.

“It’s a nice house, Will,” I say.

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

We go back upstairs. Still no sound from his mom. We end up taking the dog for a walk. As we head back toward the school, we find our voices again. Will lets Sadie off her leash in the football field, and we throw sticks to her and watch her run around. Huddle on the damp bleachers.

After a while, we head back. Will makes grilled-cheese sandwiches for lunch. I watch his hands move in the kitchen, this new place. While he’s pouring milk, there’s a shuffling sound behind us. I turn.

His mom in a pink bathrobe and long wet hair. Dark, tight eyes. I see where Will gets it—the unruly black mane. He must get his height from his dad. She’s not much taller than me. Slim.

She looks at us both without saying anything, and I feel my gut shrink. Then she smiles, like an afterthought. “Hi, I’m Nancy.” She shakes my hand. “William…” She sighs and darts over to him, slipping a plate under the bread on the bare counter. The she disappears up the stairs again.

“Will,” I whisper, “did you tell her I was coming?”

“Of course.” He carries on.

We watch a horror movie after lunch, taking bets on the next person to be picked off and how.

“The blond, in the garden shed. Hedge clippers,” I say.

“Ha! Lawn mower!”

“Cheater. You’ve seen this before.”

I tuck my legs up on the sofa and lean into him. His arm around me. Nancy pokes her head in, looks around with eagle eyes. I fight the impulse to leap to the other side of the sofa and deny all contact. She checks in twice more before the end of the movie.

“Your mom seems a little worried about you having a girlfriend,” I say, the word still strange in my mouth.

“She’ll get used to it.” He shrugs. “She’s paranoid about me getting someone pregnant and not going to university. She’s been talking about it since I was twelve.” Yes, Will the Womanizer.

Then I think of my mom, how different her life would have been without having me so young. Or maybe not.

“Well,” I say, “I am pretty irresistible.”

He laughs. “True.”

I feel like telling his mom not to worry—just sitting close to Will makes me feel like I’ve won the lottery. When he tries to pull me closer, brings his lips by my ear, I pull away.

“Are you crazy?” I hiss, checking the doorway. He laughs again.

I keep my eye on the clock. Maisie’s still getting out at the same time. Fifteen minutes before her school day ends,
Will walks back with me. On the elementary-school side of the street, cars are pulling in, parents getting out.

He stops me half a block away and pulls me in as I start to shiver. “When can we do this again?” His chin on my head.

“I don’t know,” I say. “When’s the next
PD
day?”

“Too far.”

I don’t know what to tell him. He kisses me goodbye—fifty onlookers not as terrifying as his mother.

Maisie chatters as I watch the blur of cars through the bus window.

Jacquie, disappeared. Mom, caught up with Oliver. No one to tell about the best day of my life.

TWENTY-ONE

As we leave Evan’s day care, white flakes drift down.

“It’s snowing!” he and Maisie both squeal, holding their hands in the air and chasing each other around. I hope their boots weren’t left at Mom’s friend’s place too. I should have checked already. We stomp slushy shoes in the lobby.

Mom is at the table, reading a newspaper. This is new.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Checking jobs in the classifieds,” she says.

Okay… I don’t have time to ask her more—off to work. Through my shift, her words pick at me. Why is she looking for work? Did she lose her job? I didn’t hear about any big scene or drunken breakdown. Maybe her boss doesn’t like Oliver hanging around, chatting her up at work.

Hasan tries to talk to me, asks me how Jacquie’s doing. I volunteer to clean the bathrooms, scrubbing the urinals to a shiny white.

I press back home through the wet flakes and corner Mom in the bathroom as soon as I get in.

“Why are you looking for work? Something happen with your job?” I start in before even saying hello.

She pulls down on an eyelid, adding a curve of black liner. Blinks at a lash in her eye and dabs the eyeliner with toilet paper.

“No, nothing happened. Oliver wants me to look for a different kind of work.”

I sit down on the edge of the tub. “Why?”

“Well”—she starts on the other eye—“he doesn’t like the”—she pauses—“attention from the other men there.”

It takes me a second. He’s jealous. Mom has to find another job because Oliver is jealous.

“That doesn’t seem quite fair to me,” I say. “You were doing that job when he met you.”

She puts down the eyeliner, inspecting each eye in the mirror. “I don’t expect you to understand, Isabelle. Someday you will.”

I imagine Will telling me to quit a job or drop a class because other guys might pay attention to me. No, I think I understand now. Oliver’s a prick.

“So what kind of job are you thinking of?” Something in a convent, I think.

“Maybe working in an office?” She moves on to the hair straightener now. Working in an office? Mom left school after grade eleven and has worked in bars forever. Who will give
her a chance? I’m not crazy about her job either, but having Oliver call the shots makes something flare in me.

“What next? Oliver’s going to dress you, tell you how to be a mother?” I say.

“Relationships are all about compromise,” she says, probably quoting Oliver.

I shake my head and go scrub dishes in the sink. An uneasy feeling moves through me. It was hard enough keeping things together before, when it was just the four of us. At least I know Mom’s crap. Now there’s Oliver, pushing and pulling from the sidelines. I don’t know what I’m dealing with.

When she leaves for work, I wish I could call Will. I actually have his phone number now. Knowing my luck, Nancy would answer and want to have a conversation about birth control or abstinence. What would I say to him anyway? I’ve done my best to shield him from all of this.

Thinking about Will gives me another idea though. After I get Maisie and Evan to bed, I pull out my homework in the living room. Will asked when we could get together again. Here I am, sitting by myself in an empty room night after night. Maisie and Evan are out cold until morning. Mom’s at work until three or four. Why couldn’t Will be here with me for an hour or two? Besides the fact that he’d see our really ugly sofa.

No. Is even seeing this apartment too much? The camp cot in the bedroom. Bathrobe guy wandering the halls. Fridge stocked with beer and not much else. But he already knows
my mom is a drunk and I live in a dump. He seems okay with that. Every time I talk myself out of asking him over, the idea pops back again. When else am I going to see him, especially with Mom out with Oliver all the time? At this rate, we’ll have a date when all the planets align and world peace is achieved.

I go back and forth about it until English the next morning, when his foot against mine gives me a boost of courage. While Mr. Drummond writes the elements of a short story on the board, I scratch a note on a piece of paper:
Talk after class
. Drop it over my shoulder. For some reason, my stomach flutters. Afraid he won’t think it’s a good idea, that he’ll see too much if he comes, that he’ll think it’s too much effort for an hour or two with me.

Mr. Drummond gives us an assignment: write a short story, due in a week. I think of my notebook with my tale of the twins and their suicide pact, or the story I wrote about the bullied nutjob. I think I’ll start something new.

At the end of class, I pull Will down the hall a bit, away from Mr. Drummond’s door, and tell him about my idea. He stands there, smiling like an idiot. “Of course I’ll come.”

I try to explain the timing, how it’ll have to work. How he’ll have to bus to me, all the details. He’s not really listening—he’s smiling, jittery.

When I stop talking, he stoops to kiss me. There’s a shuffling noise off to the side, and I pull away. Mr. Drummond turns on his heel to go back into the classroom. My face is on fire.

“Okay, you’re late for Chemistry,” I say, shoving Will in that general direction.

We work out some details at lunch, like what day would be the best. I tell him which bus to catch from the school and when it runs. When Maisie and Evan will be asleep.

“You haven’t told your family about me, have you?” he says.

I shake my head, watching his reaction. “I’m not embarrassed, Will. I don’t trust my mom with a lot of things.”

He nods.

“I will eventually, when I know she can handle it.”

“Okay.”

* * *

That night, lying in my cot, I think about the story I’ll write for English. I know exactly what it’ll be: a girl who runs away from home and, using her street smarts, manages to eat and find a place to stay every night. She dodges seedy pimps. Outsmarts dealers. Does some wrestler moves on the guy who thinks he’ll have his way with her. Returns home with a new respect for life.

Where are you, Jacquie, and how do you survive?
Because I don’t think it’s a part-time job at Safeway. My mind wanders to dark places. I try to steer it back. Almost succeed.

I’m still awake when Mom comes home from her date with Oliver. She leaves the hall light on, opening the door a
crack to see her way into the bedroom. I hear her drop her clothes on the floor, the clink of earrings in a dish.

“You’re home early,” I say.

“Isabelle. You startled me.”

I lie in the dark and hear her sniff.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“Yes, yes. Fine.” Knowing I know better. “Just working through some stuff with Oliver.”

She pads around the room for another minute before shutting the door behind her, leaving me in the dark again. I hear the refrigerator door open, the clink of bottles.

I stay awake a long time.

* * *

Thursday, the temperature drops, and there’s an icy wind.

“Do you still want to come over tonight?” I ask Will. “We could pick another day.”

“No, I’ll come.”

Evan starts to cry on the way home from day care, getting a full blast of it in the face. I pick him up, his back to the wind, and carry him the rest of the way.

At home a few empties dot the table. I drop Evan and search for Mom, my snowy shoes leaving tracks across the carpet. I find her stretched out on the bed. My heart sinks. The plan won’t work if she doesn’t leave tonight.

I tap on her feet. “Mom. Mom, wake up.”

She cracks open an eye and lifts her neck off the pillow. Okay, not too far gone. “Hi, love. Just having a little nap before work.” She rolls onto her back and stares at the ceiling. Puffy eyes.

I sit next to her, the springs creaking. “What is it?”

She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “Just being sensitive.”

“What?”

“Oh, something Oliver said hurt my feelings.” She stops. I think she’s finished. “He said I have ‘baggage.’ I took it badly.”

Something twinges in me. How would I feel if Will said those words to me? Even if they were true. Especially because they are true. “I’m sorry.” What a joke, him saying that to her. A forty-year-old compulsive talker who lives with his parents, and she’s the one with baggage. I consider hiring a hit man.

“We’re just going through a bumpy patch. All relationships have them,” she says, pulling herself up.

“I’ll make supper,” I tell her, trying to help. Possibly feeling a tiny bit guilty about sneaking Will in later.

She has a double rum and Coke with her tuna sandwich. Cheeks low, eyes flat. I can see we’re going to skip the giggly stage tonight and go straight to weepy.

When she reaches for a refill, I put my hand on hers. “Wait until after work, okay?”

She nods, knowing I’m right.

I offer her some of my money to take a taxi tonight rather than the bus. She uses her tip money to catch a taxi
home each night, but we can’t normally afford it both ways. “No, no. I’ll just bundle up,” she says. And she’s gone, right on schedule.

I straighten up and give Maisie and Evan a quick bath. Wash the dishes. Rush through bedtime stories to have them in bed ten minutes early. I want them out cold when Will comes. I get a little panicky when Evan gets up twice to pee.

“Enough,” I tell him, “or I’ll skip stories tomorrow night.” That seems to work.

A couple of minutes to fix myself up, and then there’s a quiet tap on the door. Someone else must have buzzed him in.

I open the door and there he is, ears bright red. Snowflakes in his hair. I reach up and put a warm palm on each cheek, then tiptoe to Maisie and Evan’s room to see if they’re still awake. Sound asleep. I ease their door shut behind me.

“Okay, we’re good.”

I know I should be embarrassed about everything—the mismatched dining set, fraying flowered sofa. Hideous shag carpet. He probably already saw the guy in the bathrobe. Definitely rode in the pissy elevator. I’m so happy he’s here, though, I don’t even care. It’s like being in the prop room again.