The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [84]
“Everybody knows that if there’s one mouse, there are more,” I said. “We’ve got to get rid of them.”
Dan, the humanist, was secretly glad the mouse had resurfaced—that he hadn’t done any damage in sealing off its home.
“It looked like the same mouse to me,” Henry said.
“They all look that way,” I said. “That doesn’t mean—”
“Poor thing,” Dan said.
“Are either of you going to set traps, or do I have to do it?”
“You have to do it,” Dan said. “I can’t stand it. I don’t want to kill a mouse.”
“I think there’s only one mouse,” Henry said.
Glaring at them, I went into the kitchen and took the mousetraps out of their cellophane packages. I stared at them with tears in my eyes. I did not know how to set them. Dan and Henry had made me seem like a cold-blooded killer.
“Maybe it will just leave,” Dan said.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Dan,” I said. “If you aren’t going to help, at least don’t sit around snickering with Henry.”
“We’re not snickering,” Henry said.
“You two certainly are buddy-buddy.”
“What’s the matter now? You want us to hate each other?” Henry said.
“I don’t know how to set a mousetrap,” I said. “I can’t do it myself.”
“Poor Mommy,” Joanna said. She was in the hallway outside the living room, listening. I almost turned on her to tell her not to be sarcastic, when I realized that she was serious. She felt sorry for me. With someone on my side, I felt new courage about going back into the kitchen and tackling the problem of the traps.
Dianne called and said she had asked her husband if he would go out one night a week so she could go out with friends or stay home by herself. He said no, but agreed to take stained-glass lessons with her.
One Tuesday it rained. I stayed home and daydreamed, and remembered the past. I thought about the boy I dated my last year in high school who used to take me out to the country on weekends, to where some cousins of his lived. I wondered why he always went there, because we never got near the house. He would drive partway up their long driveway in the woods and then pull off onto a narrow little road that trucks sometimes used when they were logging the property. We parked on the little road and necked. Sometimes the boy would drive slowly along on the country roads looking for rabbits, and whenever he saw one, which was pretty often—sometimes even two or three rabbits at once—he floored it, trying to run the rabbit down. There was no radio in the car. He had a portable radio that got only two stations (soul music and classical) and I held it on my lap. He liked the volume turned up very loud.
Joanna comes to my bedroom and announces that Uncle Bobby is on the phone.
“I got a dog,” he says.
“What kind?”
“Aren’t you even surprised?”
“Yes. Where did you get the dog?”
“A guy I knew a little bit in college is going to jail, and he persuaded me to take the dog.”
“What is he going to jail for?”
“Burglary.”
“Joanna,” I say, “don’t stand there staring at me when I’m talking on the phone.”
“He robbed a house,” Bobby says.
“What kind of a dog is it?” I ask.
“Malamute and German shepherd. It’s in heat.”
“Well,” I say, “you always wanted a dog.”
“I call you all the time, and you never call me,” Bobby says.
“I never have interesting news.”
“You could call and tell me what you do on Tuesday nights.”
“Nothing very interesting,” I say.
“You could go to a bar and have rum drinks and weep,” Bobby says. He chuckles.
“Are you stoned?” I ask.
“Sure I am. Been home from work for an hour and a half. Ate a Celeste pizza, had a little smoke.”
“Do you really have a dog?” I ask.
“If you were a male dog, you wouldn’t have any doubt of it.”
“You’re always much more clever than I am. It’s hard to talk to you on the phone, Bobby.”
“It’s hard to be me,” Bobby says. A silence. “I’m not sure the dog likes me.”
“Bring it over. Joanna will love it.”
“I’ll be around with it Tuesday night,” he says.
“Why is it so interesting to you that I have one night a week to myself ?”
“Whatever you do,” Bobby says, “don’t rob a house.”
We hang up, and