Set This House In Order Part 16

"Yes," said Mouse, by rote, "we are."

"Yes, we are. And we're very lucky that your father was so careful to provide for us, so that we can afford those fine things."

"Yes," said Mouse.

A photograph of Mouse's father hung on the dining room wall. The photo showed Morgan Driver standing on a hill in front of a castle somewhere in the English countryside. His image was slightly fuzzy, as if the picture-taker couldn't decide whether to focus the camera on him or the grand edifice behind him, but by looking closely you could make out a solemn expression on his face -- surprisingly solemn, for a man just married.

A honeymoon in England: that was among the first, and still one of the finest, of the fine things Mouse's father had provided. Mouse's mother had always had a pa.s.sion for things British, "ever since I was a little girl, smaller even than you, little Mouse," and those weeks touring the British Isles remained one of the high points of her life. "So wonderful," she said whenever she mentioned it, which was often, "so fine, and with a fine gentleman to escort me."

A fine gentleman to escort me. Morgan Driver was not a rich man, though you'd never know that to hear Mouse's mother talk about him. He sold insurance for a living, and because his business required him to travel a lot, he knew how to get good deals on airfares and nice hotels. And he did have some money; but he wasn't rich.

What he was, though, was well-insured. Probably the single most important thing he'd ever done, as far as providing financially for Mouse and her mother, was to board a commuter jet plane with a faulty engine mount. That had happened when Mouse was only two, so she never actually got to know her father as a real person. To her, he was a series of stories, some told by her mother, some by her grandmother, and a few more speculative tales delivered as memoranda. Mouse liked her grandmother's stories the best, but it was her mother's that loomed largest -- stories of Morgan Driver the valiant knight, the gentleman who had died tragically, but not without first ensuring that his family would always have fine things.

"So good to have one's needs provided for," Mouse's mother said, spooning stew onto her plate.

"So good to live in a nice house with fine things." Whenever she went on like this, her voice affected a phony aristocratic diction and lilt that Mouse secretly detested. But Mouse couldn't very well tell her mother to stop putting on airs, and besides, affected and irritating was better than plain-spoken and violent. Much better.

"So good. . ."

"Yes," said Mouse.

"Good to have fine food, and fine furniture, and fine clothes. . ."

Mouse, whose attention was beginning to drift, came alert again at the mention of clothes.

Though she'd cleaned herself up as best she could in the bathroom, she knew her mother would not have failed to notice the dust on her blouse and skirt, or the rip in her stocking -- and of course girls who were fortunate enough to be provided with fine clothes were not supposed to ruin them by crawling around in the mud.

Mouse gazed furtively across the table and wondered if she was about to be punished. Her mother was unpredictable that way: the same thing that made her horribly angry on one occasion might move her to laughter on another, and go totally unremarked on a third. And sometimes she seemed to overlook something only to bring it up later, in a totally unrelated context.

For now, Mouse decided, her mother wasn't going to make a fuss about the clothes -- she'd already moved on in her litany of fine things, and her attention seemed to be focused on the food in front of her rather than on her daughter. Mouse allowed herself to relax a little.

"Ben Deering," her mother said suddenly, and Mouse felt a trapdoor open in the pit of her stomach. "Ben Deering, Ben Deering," her mother repeated, making it a singsong, "all the ladies love Ben Deering." She c.o.c.ked her head, like an owl staring at something small that cowered at the bottom of a well. "Ben Deering, you know, I didn't think I knew that name -- I certainly never heard it from you -- but then I remembered, there's a Ben Deering Senior who manages a junkyard over in Trash Town."

Trash Town was Mouse's mother's name for Woods Basin, the part of town located below South Woods Park. It was a poor neighborhood of rundown one-bedroom houses and trailer lots, where only the worst sorts of people lived. Mouse's mother knew just how bad the Trash Towners were because, through an indignity of fate, she herself had been born in Woods Basin, and had languished there for thirty-two years until her superior character showed through and she was rescued by her marriage to Morgan Driver. Though she had finally escaped their clutches, the residents of Trash Town remained jealous of Mouse's mother and continued to conspire against her, seizing any opportunity to cause her grief. Whenever something went wrong in or around the Driver household -- when a tree blew over in the yard, or the bas.e.m.e.nt flooded, or a light bulb burned out ahead of schedule -- Mouse's mother usually found some way to blame it on the Trash Town conspiracy.

Needless to say, Mouse was forbidden to go anywhere near Trash Town. And actually fraternizing with a Trash Town resident -- even unintentionally -- was a form of treason, a mortal sin against her mother. The trapdoor in Mouse's stomach swung wide as she realized just how much trouble she was in.

"A junkyard manager!" her mother exclaimed with mock cheerfulness. "And you know his son."

"No!" Mouse squeaked. "No, I --"

"No?"

"I don't," Mouse protested meekly, quailing under her mother's steady gaze, her voice falling almost to a whisper. "I don't. . ."

"Don't what?" her mother demanded. "Don't know him?" Her left hand dipped beneath the edge of the table and came up brandis.h.i.+ng the memorandum. She lifted the piece of paper above her head, twisting her wrist as though she were shaking a tambourine. "You don't know him?"

And Mouse was lost, she knew she was lost, but still she managed to say, gesturing halfheartedly at the memorandum: "It was just a trick. . ."

" 'It was just a trick,' " her mother mimicked her. "Why would someone try to trick you unless he thought you could be tricked? Hmm? What were you doing with this boy that made him think you'd hold hands with him?"

"Nothing."

" 'Nothing.' "

"I never even talked to him before."

"I see. So I suppose he was just sitting around one day, wondering who he could get to hold hands with him, and suddenly a light went on and he said, 'What about Verna Driver's daughter? She's never even talked to me before, never shown any interest in me at all, but why make things easy on myself?'"

"I don't know why he picked on me," Mouse said sadly. "Maybe. . . maybe like it says, maybe Cindy Wheaton --"

"Who's your little friend, by the way?" When Mouse blinked uncomprehendingly at this, her mother gave the memorandum another shake. "Your friend. The one you sent to spy on Ben Deering, even though you weren't interested in him."

"I don't know," Mouse said, understanding even as the words left her mouth how crazy that must sound, and not just to her mother but to anyone who heard her say it.

"You don't know," her mother echoed. "Of course not, you don't even know Ben Deering, so how could you know who you sent to follow him?"

"I didn't --"

"You know what I don't know? I don't know if you're telling the truth when you say you understand how lucky you are. I don't know if you really appreciate all the fine things you've been given.

I think maybe you're a worthless, ungrateful, lying piece of s.h.i.+t who wouldn't think twice about f.u.c.king up her life by f.u.c.king around with some gutter boy from Trash Town. I think --"

The cruel words hurt Mouse, and she began to tremble from the effort it took to keep from bursting into tears. There were places in the world where a display of tears would evoke pity, but this was not one of those places -- there was no surer way to push her mother over the edge than by crying.

Even as she fought to maintain her composure, she tried to think of some way to refute the terrible accusation her mother had just made. She hadn't even held hands with Ben, she'd barely even talked to him, and yet here her mother was suggesting that she. . . that she. . .

Mouse made the mistake of lowering her eyes for a moment; when she looked up again, her mother was no longer seated across from her.

Mouse screamed and tried to duck under the table, but her mother was too quick, catching her and tossing her back in her seat, then pitching the whole chair over backwards. The impact with the floor stunned Mouse, and by the time she recovered her mother had planted a foot in the center of her chest, pinning her.

Like a heavy stone weight, the foot on her chest made it difficult to breathe. "What's that?"

Mouse's mother said, as Mouse struggled to fill her lungs. She reached back to the table, scooped up a handful of hot stew, and flung it into Mouse's gasping, upturned face. "Oh my goodness!" she exclaimed.

"Who did that? I don't know." Another handful. "What about that? I don't know." Then she took her foot off Mouse's chest and -- before Mouse could draw a full breath -- swooped down, clamping one hand over Mouse's mouth and with the other pinching Mouse's nose shut. "Mommy, why can't I get any air?" she whispered in Mouse's ear. "I don't know."

After that, she pounded Mouse's head against the floor. Or maybe the pounding sensation was just lack of oxygen; it was hard to be sure, because by that point Mouse was leaving her body, sliding down into darkness. She curled up in the dark and went to sleep, and whatever else her mother did had nothing to do with her.

When she woke up nineteen hours later, she was sitting on the edge of her bed in her room. Even before checking the clock-radio, she sensed that no more than a day had pa.s.sed: her nose was still tender from having been pinched so roughly, and she could feel a bruise where her mother had stood on her breastbone; the scratches on her arms, though faded, were still there too. (There were also some more mysterious aches and pains, in particular a raw soreness between her legs that made her want to dive straight down into the dark again -- but she didn't let herself dwell on it.) The first thing Mouse did after getting her bearings was make sure she was really alone. She looked in the closet three times and under the bed twice before accepting that her mother was not in the room. That led naturally to two more questions: where was her mother, and what mood was she in? One drawback to blacking out during her mother's rages was that Mouse could never be sure what sort of closure, if any, had been reached.

She checked around her room for a few more minutes, hoping to find a list that might offer her some clues, but her mother's reaction to the memorandum had apparently scared off the list-maker for the time being -- either that, or her mother had gotten to the list first and destroyed it for spite. Whatever the reason, Mouse found nothing, and so she could only cross her fingers that her mother was not lying in wait for her as she slipped out into the upstairs hallway.

Her mother was not in the hall. Mouse moved quickly to the bathroom, shut the door (there was no lock), checked the corners, tub, and shower stall, and opened the hot-water tap in the sink. She sat on the toilet and peed, once more pointedly ignoring the soreness between her legs; by the time she was finished, the mirror over the sink had fogged up, and she stared into it for a long while in hopes that a graffito would appear. None did.

When she finally got up the nerve to go downstairs, she found her mother in the kitchen, chopping away at something on the cutting board by the sink. "Little Mouse," her mother said, without turning around. The words sounded neutral, her mother letting her know that she knew Mouse was there, but beyond that neither threatening nor welcoming. Mouse wanted to run and hide anyway, but she forced herself to loiter for a few minutes, to see if her mother would say or do anything else to her. She didn't, just went on chopping, and eventually Mouse slipped away, still uncertain whether the storm had pa.s.sed.

On Sunday afternoon, Mouse's mother gave her a playful shove in pa.s.sing that tumbled her down the stairs and sprained her wrist. That night at dinner, she served Mouse a side dish of frozen peas topped with a slab of unmelted b.u.t.ter, and pretended not to understand why Mouse didn't want to eat her vegetables (at first she played it like the joke that it was, but when Mouse wouldn't swallow even a spoonful of the gravel-like peas, she became genuinely angry, and ended up ordering Mouse from the table and sending her to bed hungry). These incidents were unpleasant, but they were also unexceptional -- typical everyday fun and games -- and thus not especially indicative of her mother's mood. It wasn't until Monday morning that Mouse got a clear sign that her mother was still upset about Ben Deering.

It happened as she was leaving for school. Mouse was on her way out the door when her mother -- who up to that moment had appeared to be in the sweetest of humors -- suddenly grabbed her by her bad wrist and pulled her up short, demanding: "Now what did we agree about that Trash Town boy?"

Mouse, who had no idea what they had agreed, had to think quickly: "I'm never going to speak to him again!"

"G.o.dd.a.m.n right you're not," her mother snarled, though that seemed to be the correct answer.

Smiling pleasantly again, she added: "Now when you come home today I may not be here, but I don't want you to worry. I have a little errand to run." Her head bobbed with a barely suppressed fit of giggles.

"You just wait here for me to get back, and don't go answering the door to any strangers!"

That day at lunch Ben Deering tried to sit with her again. She saw him coming towards her table, braced herself to put him off -- -- and found herself in cla.s.s, shutting her notebook as last bell rang.

Ben Deering, Chris Cheney, Scott Welch, and Cindy Wheaton were standing in a group on the front steps of the school as Mouse left the building. They all stared at Mouse, openly hostile but nervous, too, as if they were afraid Mouse might attack them. Mouse, afraid they were planning to attack her, scurried past as quick as she could. "You're a f.u.c.kin' crazy girl, you know that?" Cindy Wheaton shouted at her back.

The house was empty when Mouse got home. At first this was a relief, but by dinnertime, when her mother had still not returned, Mouse began to worry. Maybe the house wasn't really empty after all; maybe her mother, instead of being out on an errand, was actually hiding somewhere, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. The fact that Mouse was getting hungry did not help her nerves any.

Finally, about an hour after dark, her mother came home, in such a triumphant good mood that Mouse became even more worried. Her mother didn't say where she'd been, just pinched Mouse on the cheek and set about fixing a late supper. She made lamb chops with mashed potatoes and creamed spinach, one of Mouse's favorite meals: a very bad omen.

They were almost done eating when the doorbell rang. "Now I wonder who that could be,"

Mouse's mother chuckled, and ran to answer it. She'd been gone only a moment or two when she began yelling: "Penny! Penny, you get out here right now!"

Penny. Mouse's mother only called her by her true name in front of strangers -- usually strangers she was trying to fool in some way. Wondering what new game was afoot, and how much it was going to hurt, Mouse slid down out of her chair and followed the sound of her mother's shouts.

Mouse was astonished to find Ben Deering at the front door -- Ben Deering, and a tall man who she guessed was Ben's father. Ben looked both sullen and embarra.s.sed, and he was trying hard not to make eye contact with anyone, especially Mouse; Ben's father and Mouse's mother were angry, though Mouse had an intimation that only Ben's father's anger was real.

"Is this her?" Ben's father asked, nodding at Mouse.

"Yes," Mouse's mother said, as if it pained her to admit it. "That's my daughter."

Mouse s.h.i.+ed back a step, thinking that the tall man might be about to hit her, but instead he turned to his son and said, "Well?"

Ben sighed, and with an almost theatrical effort made himself look Mouse in the eye. "I'm sorry,"

he said.

Apparently this wasn't sufficient; no sooner were the words out of his mouth than his father smacked him hard on the back of his head. "You're sorry what?" Ben Senior said.

"I'm sorry about the bet I made," Ben recited grudgingly. "I'm sorry I tried to trick you. It was wrong." He glanced up at his father as if to add: Is that enough?

"All right," said Ben Senior. "You go wait in the car for me." Ben eagerly obeyed.

"Well," Ben Senior said, turning his attention to Mouse. He seemed to expect her to recite something now, but she only blinked at him, so he cleared his throat and went on: "As you can see, my son got your message. Or rather, we all got your message."

My message? thought Mouse, and Ben's father, noting her perplexity, growled: "Oh, for pity's sake!" Mouse s.h.i.+ed back another step.

"For pity's sake. . ." Ben's father jammed a hand in his coat pocket. "The message I'm referring to, young lady -- as if you didn't know -- is the one you pitched through our living-room window earlier this evening." He brought out a chunk of brick with a tattered sheet of paper wrapped around it. Mouse had never seen the brick before, but when Ben's father smoothed the paper out she recognized it as her memorandum. For a horrified second she wondered what she had done. Then she remembered her mother's errand.

"Penny!" Verna Driver's feigning of outrage was flawless. "Penny, my goodness, what's gotten into you? How could you do such a thing?" As she said this she turned, and when her back was to Ben's father she let the outrage-mask drop, revealing impish glee beneath; she stuck her tongue out at Mouse, and winked. "Oh, Mr. Deering," she continued, putting the mask back in place, "Mr. Deering, I'm so very sorry, I can't tell you how shocked I am by this."

"The boy acted badly," Ben's father said. "But" -- he hefted the brick -- "vandalism is not an appropriate response."

"Oh, of course not!" Mouse's mother said. "I don't know what Penny --"

"Neither is what you did at the school today, young lady," Ben's father added. "Yes, my son told me about that, too."

"At the school today?" The outrage-mask slipped a bit. "She did something. . . at the school?"

"An uncontrolled temper is a dangerous thing," Ben's father said ominously. "I'll leave these with you," he continued, offering the memorandum and the chunk of brick to Mouse's mother, "and ask that you keep your daughter away from my son and away from my house."

"You can be sure of that," Mouse's mother said, the mask slipping a notch further, revealing an edge of malice. Then she caught herself, and went on soothingly: "Of course we'll pay for the damage to your window."

But Ben's father, perhaps sensing that something was not right here, said: "Never mind the damage. You just rein in your daughter before she hurts somebody. An uncontrolled temper. . ." he concluded, jabbing a warning finger at Mouse. He turned and left.

"'You just rein in your daughter before she hurts somebody,'" Mouse's mother mimicked to his back, discarding the mask. As the Deerings drove away, she asked: "What happened at the school?"

Mouse had just been wondering the same thing. Casting back over the events of the day, she recalled something that hadn't really registered at the time: when she'd pa.s.sed Ben and his friends outside after cla.s.s, Ben's hair was mussed, and his jacket and s.h.i.+rt were covered with splotches: dried food stains. "I think I dumped my lunch tray on Ben," Mouse said, in her smallest voice.

"You think you did?" Her mother shot her a sideways glance, and for a third time Mouse s.h.i.+ed back. But then her mother burst out laughing, and threw an affectionate arm around her. "Well, I guess we showed those Trash Town b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" she crowed. "So, would my little Mouse like some ice cream?"

That was the end of the Ben Deering matter, at least as far as her mother was concerned. For Mouse herself it wasn't really over, of course; word of the brick-throwing and food-dumping incidents spread quickly at school, and Mouse, now a certified "crazy girl," became a magnet for taunts and abuse.

Then one morning about two weeks later, a school circular appeared mysteriously in Mouse's book bag. Mouse found it as she was packing away her homework, and her mother, who was hovering nearby, s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of her hands before she could get a good look at it.

"What's this?" her mother said, scanning the circular. Her eyes widened, and she began to read more carefully, growing more and more excited. "Why, this is wonderful!" she exclaimed. "What a wonderful opportunity!" She turned, casually jabbing Mouse in the head with her elbow. "Why didn't you tell me about this last night?"

Mouse, wincing from the jab, could only shrug. When her mother was finished reading she took the circular back, and examined it herself. "Dear concerned parent," it began, This is to inform you of an exciting new extracu rricular program being made available to exceptional stu dents su ch as you r dau ghter. Throu gh a special arrangement with the prestigiou s English Society of International Correspondents, we. . .

Right away Mouse noticed something peculiar. The paper was official school letterhead, but the text was typed, not mimeographed the way a regular circular would be, and the typewriter's tendency to drop its u's was oddly familiar. Some years ago Mouse's grandmother had given her an old Underwood manual typewriter that had dropped its u's that way; then Mouse's mother, irritated by the gift, had gone out and bought Mouse an expensive electric typewriter, and insisted she throw the Underwood away, which as far as she knew she had. But it seemed strange that the school's typewriter would have the exact same fault as the discarded Underwood, and the same typeface too -- strange enough to make Mouse wonder why she couldn't remember actually putting the Underwood in the trash.

The "exciting new extracurricular program" described in the circular was pretty strange, too.

What it was, once you got past the fancy language, was a pen-pal program. The English Society of International Correspondents set up letter exchanges between "exceptional" American high school students -- Mouse had a very hard time applying that adjective to herself -- and even more exceptional British boarding-school students, many of whom, the circular hinted, were members of the n.o.bility. The apparent purpose of this, on the American side at least, was a sort of cultural osmosis -- through long-distance exposure to the young lords and ladies of England, the American high schoolers would be elevated from exceptional to superexceptional status, thereby ensuring the brightest possible futures for themselves. What the British kids were supposed to get out of it the circular didn't say.

To Mouse, the whole thing seemed frankly ridiculous. It also seemed like a prank. There was a pen-pal program at school, but it involved sending postcards to poor village kids in Africa and Asia, an activity about as suitable for Verna Driver's daughter as volunteering at a soup kitchen in Trash Town.

"You're signing up for this," Mouse's mother said. "You're signing up for this today."

"OK," said Mouse.

And she tried to. She skipped out of lunch early and went to the after-school-program office, where the administrator Mr. Jacobs scratched his head and said he'd never heard of the English Society of International Correspondents.

"I'm sorry," Mr. Jacobs said. "I could sign you up for the Third World Postcard Buddies program, if you'd like. . ."

"No thank you," said Mouse.

"Well, then." He handed the circular back to her. "If I do hear something, I'll contact you, but it seems like this is probably a joke of some kind."

Of course it was a joke. But now Mouse had a problem, because she was going to have to go home and tell her mother that she hadn't done as she was told, that she couldn't do it. Thinking this, she felt a tickle in her left palm, and looked down to find a graffito written on her bare skin in ballpoint pen: JUST PRETEND YOU DID.