by Greg Olear
A clatter from the living room disturbs this train of thought: Steve playing with a catnip toy? Somehow I know better. With my heart in my throat, I creep down the hall to investigate.
One of the mice has at last found its way beyond the wall. Steve—who perhaps heard Joe Palladino’s lecture this afternoon; perhaps one of an exterminator’s functions is to light a fire under his housecat ally, to play Knute Rockne to the resident four-pawed mouse-killer—has discharged his feline duty, and has the li’l varmint trapped under the sofa; the same sofa where Sharon and I partook of our wine and cheese. Was it the smell of cheese that drew the brazen mouse from beyond the wall? Do mice really like cheese?
For all the times I’ve read, heard, or used the hackneyed phrase “cat and mouse,” I’ve never actually beheld a real cat toying with a real mouse. I always assumed that the cat, with its superior cunning and quickness, would pursue the mouse relentlessly with paws but without pause until the disgusting little poop machine was dead. But it’s not really like that. The chase comes in stops and starts, like the action in a football game. Cat pounces upon mouse, catches him, then releases him, as a fly fisherman and his prize trout. Mouse retreats, but knows better than to attempt a full-fledged escape. Both creatures wait without moving for many minutes. Then, without warning, the cat strikes. He bats the mouse around with his paws, like a one-named Brazilian midfielder dribbling a soccer ball, and for a few moments, both animals are a blur. Then Steve pins him by the tail—predator and prey are in the middle of the floor now, nowhere for the little fucker to hide—and I get a good look at the cause of my nightly autumnal terror. The mouse—who must know his days of haunting my interior walls are over—breathes furiously, the whole of his body expanding contracting expandingcontracting, like a tiny billows, his flaxseed-sized heart pounding furiously in his tiny ribcage. And as I watch him anticipate the end—an end Steve, master of suspense that he is, a feline Hitchcock, seems determined to prolong—I actually feel pity for the poor thing. The mouse, he’s like me—more like me than the cat, certainly. He’s small, this mouse: insignificant, vulnerable, afraid, in over his head; and though his desires may be great, his needs are modest. And here he is, pursued without relent down dark hallways by a fierce creature of the night, a sharp-fanged monster, an embodier of unquenchable cruelty, as we are in our dreams.
After yesterday’s encounter with the Headless Whoresman, after those twenty-four hours of torture, the red-alert threat of the destruction of my marriage and my entire way of life never more real, this puny, terrified ball of fur seems not so scary.
Crossing the living room, I open the front door, admitting the night’s chill. “Over here, mouse,” I tell him, as if he knows what this means. “Here.”
Then I walk casually toward the chase scene, the set piece from a Mickey and Minnie horror film, and scoop up the cat.
“Go, mouse. Go!”
I give him a little kick. He scurries for the door, slowly at first, as if expecting to be stopped, as if this is merely an elaboration on the same old game, a hazard on this mini-golf course of rodentine death; as if he has already succumbed to his fate and doesn’t trust his two-footed savior. Once it dawns on his stupid vermin brain that he’s in the clear, he picks up speed. He zigzags to the wall, creeps along the baseboard, and runs out the door. Steve, flailing in my arms, can only watch as his prize bursts free into the night. He lets out a long howl of displeasure What the fuck are you doing, Josh? and not wanting to disturb the kids, I throw him, too, into the dark and chilly night, bolting the door behind him.
No sign of a hangover, a hangover I surely deserve, as I make my way into the bathroom and take a long, satisfying leak. Fergie and Josh Duhamel, the allegations of his dalliance with THE STRIPPER still hanging over their collective and Photoshopped-together head, eye me uneasily from the magazine cover on the floor. I’ve had it with Us Weekly, with Heidi Montag and that asshole Spencer Pratt, with Rihanna and that asshole Chris Brown, with Bristol Palin and that asshole Levi Johnston, with Jennifer Aniston and Jessica Simpson and that asshole John Mayer (do we detect a pattern here?). I’m tired of affairs with strippers and nannies and cocktail waitresses, of leaked sex tapes and risqué phone messages, of Hollywood marriages that implode in a matter of weeks. Just because they pump gas and doff their Manolo Blahniks for airport security and buy paper towels in Target does not mean that stars are anything like us.
Oops! I’ve been a mite careless with my piss stream; a few drops of urine have found their way onto the luminous faces of the celebrity Josh and Stacy. So sad, too bad. After the requisite shake—this time I aim for Duhamel’s smug, five-o’clock-shadowed mug—I roll up the magazine and toss it in the trash.
A little Mr. Mom duty today, huh?
Joe Palladino, of all people—the most artless Philistine in the Hudson Valley—has sparked something in me, the dormant creative force, the slumbering King of Wands. If not the mice, who remain, Paladin Pest Control has managed to exterminate my writer’s block. After filling the coffeemaker with cold water and Kenyan Gold, I wake up my laptop, open a NEW PROJECT in Final Draft (When was the last time I even clicked on the app icon? A good year ago, I think, last fall, the wretched attempt to craft the vampire script), and begin typing:
1. EXT. JESS’S HOUSE – DAY
A McMansion, not quite as gaudy as the others. Several cars in the driveway, including a dark blue Honda Odyssey. In the yard off to the side, an enormous swing-and-slide set, unused.
2. INT. JESS’S KITCHEN – DAY
STEVE, 36, handsome but tired, pours himself a fresh cup of coffee. We hear happy SQUEALS of small children from off camera. SHARON, 32 and pretty, enters, mug at the ready. As he tops her off, she looks at him with grave concern.
SHARON
I don’t know how to tell you this, Steve, so I’m just going to tell you.
At the first whiff of brewed coffee, that incense of the Muses, it hits me: the word! The Mr. Mom upgrade! The updated term for what I am, what all we stay-at-home dads are. I open the “title page” in Final Draft, type out the twelve letters. Then I go pour my coffee. I reclaim my seat, and I sip the Kenyan Gold, and I admire the word I’ve written on the screen . . . but only for a minute. Roland’s awake now—I can hear the clatter of Thomas tracks tumbling over—and he’s calling for me, and loudly (loud is his only volume). Time to deploy. Leaving my laptop open on the title page, I turn off the baby monitor, so he doesn’t wake the mother-and-daughter sleeping beauties, and I march up the stairs, mug in hand, to report for duty.
Such is the life of the fathermucker.
Acknowledgments
JEN SCHULKIND: THANKS SO MUCH FOR GIVING ME ANOTHER crack at this. As I’ve now come to expect, your editorial insights have markedly improved this book. It’s a privilege to work with you.
Mollie Glick, my agent of almost ten years: bless you for taking the long view. You rock, as does the rest of the Foundry crew (mercy buckets, Stéphanie Abou).
Robin Antalek, who read this novel in serial form, Dickens-style, before anyone else did: your encouragement and support have been priceless. I can’t thank you enough.
Big love and thanks to everyone in the TNB universe, especially Jessica Anya Blau, Susan Henderson, Jonathan Evison, Lenore Zion, Zara Potts, Jeffrey Pillow, Nick Belardes, Kimberly M. Wetherell, Gina Frangello, Tawni Freeland, Gloria Harrison, Quenby Moone, Cynthia Hawkins, Megan DiLullo, Erika Rae, Richard Cox, Simon Smithson, Matt Baldwin, Sean Beaudoin, D. R. Haney, and the great Brad Listi.
Lauren Cerand: you are a genius.
Mad props to: Carrie Kania, Cal Morgan, Teresa Brady, Nicole Reardon, Robin Bilardello, Erica Barmash, Mary Sasso, Maggie Oberrender, Jennifer Hart, Aaron Murray, Lelia Mander, and everyone else at Harper; Christine Preston, Michael Preston, Olivia Abel, Cathy Serpico, Charles Sterne, Caitlin Welles, Liz Eslami, Jeff Bens, and Meghan O’Neill Currier; Jess Walter, Jerry Stahl, Colleen Curran, Jim Othmer, Thelma Adams, Steve Almond, Maria Semple; Molly Jong-Fast, R
uth and Terry Quinn, Liz Pickett and Les Castellanos, Elizabeth and Tim Hunter, Shari Lynn Goldstein, Keith Karchner, Jen Papataros, Erica Chase-Salerno, and the rest of our friends (both grown-ups and kids) in New Paltz.
Kathy, Lorrie, Belkis, Olga, Sandy, Charley, Cindy, Rachael, Marcia, Joan, Christine, Brieann, Toni, Deanna, Danielle, and Inge: if every preschooler had you as teachers, the world would be a much happier place. Your positive influence on our lives is impossible to overstate.
Janice and Greg Olear, Franklin and Lorraine St. John: you are patrons of the arts, whether you know it or not. Love and thanks to you and the rest of the family, especially Jeremy Olear and Lou and Diane St. John (and C. J., my niece, who is such a great artist).
To my children, Dominick and Prudence: you are a daily source of inspiration and joy, even on days when Dad is grumpy. I am blessed to have such wonderful, smart, and dazzling children.
Finally, to my lovely, talented, and no-doubt-about-it faithful wife, Stephanie: only thirteen more years till we can go to Europe for a month! Without you, I don’t know where I’d be . . . someplace colder, shallower, less meaningful, less supportive . . . Brooklyn, maybe? But seriously: this book doesn’t exist without you. I love you more than you know.
Also by Greg Olear
Totally Killer
About the Author
Greg Olear is the senior editor of the lit blog The Nervous Breakdown and the author of the novel Totally Killer. His work has appeared in therumpus.net, Babble.com, themillions.com, Chronogram, and Hudson Valley Magazine. A professor of creative writing at Manhattanville College, he lives with his family in New Paltz, New York.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
Credits
Cover design by Amanda Kain
Copyright
FATHERMUCKER. Copyright © 2011 by Greg Olear. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
First Edition
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Olear, Greg.
Fathermucker : a novel / Greg Olear. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-06-205971-0
1. Stay-at-home fathers—Fiction. 2. Parenting—Fiction. 3. Marriage—Fiction. 4. Political correctness—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3615.L426F38 2011
813'.6—dc22
2010054575
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11 12 13 14 15 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062059727
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