The Last House on Needless Street

by Catriona Ward

  ‘Can I have a kitty?’ I asked, as I did every so often. Maybe I thought I could surprise her into a different answer.

  ‘No animals in the house, Teddy,’ she said. ‘You know how I feel about pets. It’s cruel, keeping living things in captivity.’ You could tell she wasn’t from around here. Her voice still bore the faintest trace of her father’s country. A pinched sound around the ‘r’s. But it was more how she held herself, as if waiting for a blow from behind.

  ‘Daddy,’ I said.

  ‘You listen to your mother.’

  I made a crying face at that, but only to myself. I didn’t want to be a nuisance. I stroked my hand through the air and pretended I could feel silky fur under my hand, a solid head with enquiring ears. I had wanted a cat ever since I could remember. Mommy always said no. (I can’t help but wonder, now, if she knew something I didn’t, whether she saw the future, like a streak of red on the horizon.)

  As we came close to the lake, the air took on the scent of deep water.

  We got there early but the shore was already covered with families, blankets spread out like squares on a checkerboard on the white sand. Shadflies hung in clouds over the sheeny surface. The morning sun was strong; it tingled on my skin like vinegar.

  ‘Keep your sweater vest on, Teddy,’ Mommy said. It was hot but I knew better than to argue.

  I played with Daddy in the water. Mommy sat in her chair, holding her blue silk parasol. The fringe rippled in the breeze. She didn’t read. She just looked out through the forest and the land and the water, at something none of us could see. She seemed like she was dreaming, or watching for an enemy. Looking back, she was probably doing both.

  The souvenir stand had little key rings carved from local forest pine. They were wonderful, shaped like dogs and fish and horses. They swung gently, looking at me with their wooden eyes, silver rings catching the light. I picked through them with water-wrinkled fingers. At the back of the rack I found her, a perfect little cat, sitting straight upright, paws together. Her tail was a question mark, her ears delicate. The carver had worked with the whorls and grain of the wood to make it look like a silky coat. I longed to have her. I felt like we were made for one another.

  Mommy’s hand fell on my shoulder. ‘Put it back, Teddy.’

  ‘But it’s not real,’ I said. ‘It’s just wooden. I could keep it in the house.’

  ‘It is time for lunch,’ she said. ‘Come.’

  She tied a napkin around my neck and handed me two small jars with blue-and-white labels – one of puréed apples, one of carrots – and a spoon. I imagined that eyes were on us, although they probably weren’t. Around us other kids were eating hot dogs and sandwiches. Mommy saw me look.

  ‘Those things are full of fat and preservatives,’ she said. ‘Our lunch is nutritionally complete. All the vitamins you need are in these jars. And it is inexpensive.’ She spoke in her nursing voice, which was a little deeper than her regular voice, the consonants more clipped. Mommy looked after sick kids in her job at the hospital. She knew what she was talking about. So you didn’t argue with the nurse voice. Daddy was between jobs. Like it was a dark gap he fell into, and now he couldn’t climb out. He ate his prunes and rice pudding without a word. The jars looked tiny in his large brown hands. He took out his coffee Thermos.

  Nearby, a baby was being fed by an impatient red woman. The label was blue and white. With a cold stab of horror I saw that the baby was eating the same creamed rice as my father. ‘Put it away,’ I said to Daddy. ‘People will see!’

  Mommy looked at me, but said nothing. ‘Finish your lunch,’ she told him gently.

  When we were done Mommy put the jars away neatly in the cooler. ‘You know where I am from, Teddy,’ she said.

  ‘Locronan,’ I said, ‘which is in Brittany. Which is in France.’ That was all I knew. Mommy never spoke of that place.

  ‘There was a boy in my village.’ She looked out across the lake, and no longer seemed to be speaking to me. ‘His parents had died in the big influenza. It cut through Locronan like a knife through butter. We all gave him what we could. But we did not have very much ourselves. He slept in our barn, with the donkey and the sheep. I don’t recall his name. In the village they called him Pemoc’h, because he slept where the pig would sleep. Each morning Pemoc’h came to our kitchen door. I would give him a glass of milk, and half a loaf of bread. Sometimes I gave him dripping from the Sunday beef. Each evening he came again. I gave him scraps from the table. Turnip tops, cracked eggs. He always thanked me three times. Trugarez, trugarez, trugarez. I can never forget that. Sometimes he was so hungry that when he took the food his hands shook. For that poor food he worked all day for my father in the field. For years, he did this, and his thanks were never less than heartfelt. He was a grateful little boy. He knew how lucky he was.’ She got up. ‘I’m going to do my thirty minutes,’ she said. Daddy nodded. She walked away, her dress blue against the blue sky. Mommy never felt too hot.

  Despite the coffee Daddy fell into a deep sleep with his hat over his face. He slept a great deal, now. It seemed like every waking moment was exhausting to him. The red woman stared at us. She had noticed the three of us eating baby food for lunch. I tried to imagine that she was red because she had been fatally scalded and would die soon. I wished for her death with all my might, but the afternoon just went on. Small teal ducks played at the far edge of the lake, where the treeline marched right down to the water’s edge. Daddy snored. He wasn’t supposed to sleep while watching me.

  Not long before, by this lake, a young boy had disappeared. They brought the kids from the group home there on weekends sometimes. Maybe they still do. This boy didn’t get back on the bus at the end of the day. Sometimes I gave myself pleasant chills, imagining what happened to him. Maybe he chased a pretty red bird, or a deer, until he was out of sight of the crowds, by the deeper reaches of the lake. When he stumbled and fell into the cold there was no one to hear his cries. Or he wandered under the vast green canopy of the forest, until all his mind became green and he faded into the dappled light and became something else, something other than a boy. But he probably just hitched a ride back into the city. He was trouble, everyone said so.

  ‘Here, Teddy.’ Mommy’s touch was soft on my head, but I gasped and started as if she had hit me. She put something into my hand and after a moment of sun blindness I saw what it was. The little cat seemed to arch her back in pleasure against my palm.

  The rush of gladness was so strong it actually felt like pain. I stroked her with a finger. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘kitty, kitten!’

  ‘Do you like it?’ I could hear the smile in Mommy’s voice.

  ‘I love her,’ I said. ‘I’ll take care of her so good.’ Worry ran through my enjoyment like a vein. ‘Was it expensive?’ I knew that we were poor right now, and I knew I wasn’t supposed to know.

  ‘It is all right,’ she said. ‘Do not worry about that, for goodness’ sake. Are you going to name her?’

  ‘She’s called Olivia,’ I said. To me the name was classy and mysterious, exactly right for the wooden cat.

  This small extravagance seemed to lift everyone up. I played with Olivia and I didn’t care any more what other people thought about us. Mommy hummed, and even Daddy smiled and did his funny walks, pretending to trip over his own shoelaces and fall down in the sand.

  Mommy’s rule was always to get the most out of a trip, so we dawdled until almost everyone else had gone. The shadows lengthened and the hills began to eat the sun. Bats were darting through the dusk by the time we left. The car was a furnace, holding all the heat of the day. Daddy had to cover the scalding seats with a towel before I could sit down in back. I put Olivia carefully in my pants pocket.

  ‘I will drive,’ Mommy said gently to Daddy. ‘You did it this morning. Fair is fair.’

  Daddy touched her face and said, ‘You are a queen among women.’

  She smiled. Her eyes still held that distant look. It was years later that I noticed she nev
er let Daddy drive after noon, after he started drinking from the coffee Thermos and doing the funny walks.

  The car rumbled through the coming night and I felt happy. Everything was gentle, inside me and out. Only children can feel that kind of safety; I know that now. I must have drifted off because waking was like a slap to the head, shocking and sudden.

  ‘Are we home?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Mommy said.

  I raised my head sleepily and looked out. By the beam of the headlights I saw that we were pulled over on the side of a dirt road. There were no people or sidewalk or other cars. Great ferns like ostrich feathers grazed the windscreen. Beyond that were the sounds and scents of trees talking, night insects making sounds like tick, tick, tick.

  ‘Did we break down?’ I asked.

  Mommy turned around and looked at me. ‘Get out, Teddy.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ The tone in Daddy’s voice was fear, although I could not have named it so, at the time. All I knew then was that it made me feel disgusted with him.

  ‘Go back to sleep.’ To me she said, ‘Teddy. Now, please.’

  Outside the car the air felt solid, like wet cotton on my cheek. I felt small in the rolling dark. But another part of me thought it was exciting, to be in the forest at night with Mommy. She never did things the way other people did them. She took my hand and led me away from the car, from the light, into the trees. Her pale dress looked like it was suspended in the dark. She was like a sea creature floating across the ocean floor.

  In the forest, even familiar things were strange. The constant wet patter of the night became the chilly drip of a dungeon. The creak of tree branches was the shifting of giant, scaly limbs. The snagging pull of a twig was bony fingers grasping at my sleeve – the fingers, maybe, of something that had once been a child, who wandered into the green light and never returned. I began to be scared. I squeezed Mommy’s hand. She squeezed back.

  ‘I am going to show you something important, Teddy.’ She sounded normal, as if she were telling me what was in my sandwich that day, and I felt better. As my eyes adjusted, everything seemed to glow in the half-dark, as if the air itself held light.

  We stopped beneath a towering fir tree. ‘This will do,’ she said. In the distance, through the crackling branches, I could still see the faint beam of our headlamps.

  ‘I bought you that cat today,’ Mommy said. I nodded. ‘Do you love it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘I love it more than I love … ice cream,’ I said. I couldn’t think how to explain my feelings for the little wooden cat.

  ‘Do you love it more than you want Daddy to get a job?’ she asked. ‘Tell the truth.’

  I thought about it. ‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘I do.’

  ‘You know the little girl I look after at the hospital, who has cancer? Do you love the cat more than you want her to get better?’

  ‘No,’ I said. Surely I couldn’t. That would make me a mean, mean boy.

  She put a cool hand on my shoulder. ‘Tell me the truth,’ she said.

  My throat felt like it was full of knives. I gave a single nod. ‘I love the kitty more,’ I said.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘You are an honest child. Now take it out of your pocket. Put it on the ground right there.’

  I laid her gently on a patch of moss at the foot of the tree. I could hardly bear to let go of her, even for a moment.

  ‘Now, back to the car. We are going home.’ Mommy held out her hand.

  I made to pick Olivia up, but Mommy’s fingers were like a cuff about my wrist. ‘No,’ she said. ‘That stays here.’

  ‘Why?’ I whispered. I thought of how cold and alone she would be, here in the dark, how the rain would wet her and rot her, how squirrels would chew her beautiful head.

  ‘It is practice,’ Mommy said. ‘You will thank me in the end. Everything in life is a rehearsal for loss. Only the smart people know it.’

  She pulled me back through the forest towards the car. The world was a dark blur. I was crying so hard, my heart felt like it would burst in my chest.

  ‘I want you to feel the power of it,’ she said. ‘Of walking away from something you love. Doesn’t it make you feel strong?’

  The spiny stars of the headlights drew closer and I heard the car door slam. My father smelled of what I thought was plum pudding and sweat. He held me tightly. ‘Where did you go?’ he asked Mommy. ‘What’s going on? He’s crying.’ Daddy turned my face this way and that, looking for hurt.

  ‘No need for hysterics,’ Mommy said with a little of the nurse. ‘We tried to find an owl. They nest round here. Then he dropped that cat key ring and we could not find it in the dark. Therefore, the waterworks.’

  ‘Oh, kiddo,’ said my father. ‘No big deal, huh?’ His arms were no comfort.

  I never asked for a kitty again. I told myself I didn’t want one any more. If I loved her I might have to leave her in the woods. Or one day she’d die, which was almost the same thing.

  So it was many years before it happened that Mommy began to prepare me for her departure. I understand her better, now. Now I’m a parent I know how afraid you get for your child. Sometimes when I think about Lauren I feel almost see-through with fear, like a pane of glass.

  When we got home Mommy put me in the bath and gently checked me all over. She found a scratch on my calf where I leaked out red. She drew the flesh back together with two neat sutures from her kit. Breaking me, then mending me, over and over – that was my mother.

  The next day Mommy set up the bird tables in the yard. She put up six wire feeders to attract the smaller birds. She hung them high from poles so the squirrels couldn’t steal. She put out cheese for the ground feeders, wooden hutches filled with grain, plastic tubes to dispense sunflower seeds, balls of fat dangling from string, a block of rock salt.

  ‘Birds are the descendants of giants,’ Mommy said. ‘Once they ruled the earth. When things got bad they made themselves small and agile and learned to live in treetops. The birds are a lesson in endurance. These are real, wild animals, Teddy – better than a key ring.’

  At first I was afraid to feed or watch them. ‘Are you going to take them away from me?’ I asked her.

  She said, surprised, ‘How could I? They do not belong to you.’ I saw that she was showing me something that was safe to love.

  All that was before the thing with the mouse, of course – before Mommy began to be afraid of me. Now the Murderer has taken the birds away, even though Mommy said that it couldn’t be done.

  I had to stop because I’m getting upset.

  All that happened fifteen years before Little Girl With Popsicle disappeared from that same beach on the lake. The lake, Little Girl With Popsicle, the Bird Murderer. I don’t like to think that all these things are connected, but events have a way of echoing through. Maybe there are secrets in that story after all. No more recording memories. I didn’t like that.

  Dee

  It happened on the second day of vacation. Dad took a couple of wrong turns on the drive up from Portland, but when they smelled water in the air they knew they were back on track.

  Dee remembers the fine details best; the popsicle in Lulu’s hand leaking sticky green onto her fingers, the drag of the wooden stick on her own purple tongue. There was sand in her shoes, and sand in her shorts, which she didn’t like. There was another girl on a neighbouring blanket of about her age and they caught one another’s eye. The other girl rolled her eyes and stuck a finger down her throat, gagging. Dee giggled. Families were so embarrassing.

  Lulu came to Dee. The straps on her white flip-flops were twisted up. ‘Please help, Dee Dee.’ Both sisters had their mother’s eyes; brown, shot through with muddy green, wide and black-lashed. Dee felt the familiar, helpless recognition, on looking into Lulu’s eyes. She knew herself to be the lesser version.

  ‘Sure,’ Dee said. ‘You big baby.’

  Lulu squawked and hit her on the head, but Dee
untwisted the straps and put the white flip-flops on her feet anyway, and made the moose face, and then they were friends again. Dee took her to the water fountain to drink, but Lulu didn’t like it because the water tasted like pencils.

  ‘Let’s read minds,’ Lulu said. It was her new thing that summer. Last year it had been ponies.

  ‘Fine,’ Dee said.

  Lulu took ten steps away, out of whispering range. She kept her eyes fixed on Dee and made a cup of her hands. She murmured into them passionately. ‘What did I say?’ she asked. ‘Did you hear anything?’

  Dee thought. ‘I think I did,’ she said slowly.

  ‘What, Dee Dee?’ Lulu almost vibrated with yearning.

  ‘It was so weird. I was just standing here, minding my own business, and then I heard your voice saying right in my ear, “I am such a pain and my big sister Dee is the best.”’

  ‘No! I never said that!’

  ‘Weird,’ said Dee. ‘That’s exactly what I heard.’

  ‘That’s not right!’ Lulu was on the verge of tears. ‘You have to do it properly, Dee Dee.’

  Dee held her. She felt the shape of her sister, her small bones, her soft skin warmed by the sun. The nape of her exposed neck, soft dark hair as short as a boy’s. Lulu hated her head to get hot. This summer she had wanted to shave it off. Their mother had only narrowly won that battle.

  Dee was sorry she had teased. ‘I’m just being silly,’ she said. ‘Let’s try again.’ Dee cupped her hands over her mouth. She felt her own warm breath fill her palms. ‘I like my new dungarees, that I bought in the sale,’ she whispered. ‘But I can’t wear them until the fall, because it’s too hot for dungarees.’ Dee imagined the words travelling to her sister’s ear. She tried to do it properly.

  ‘You’re thinking of dancing school,’ Lulu said. ‘You dream about it and you think Mom and Dad are mean.’

  Dee lowered her hands. ‘No, I don’t,’ she said slowly.

  ‘I read your mind,’ said Lulu. ‘Whisper me something else, Dee Dee.’

  Dee lowered her lips into the warm cup of her palms.