The rabbits watch the house all night long. It’s their job.
* * *
Tilly is talking to the rabbits. It’s cold outside, and she’s lost her gloves. “What’s your name?” she says. “Oh, you beauty. You beauty.” She’s on her hands and knees. Carleton watches from his side of the yard.
“Can I come over?” he says. “Can I please come over?”
Tilly ignores him. She gets down on her hands and knees, moving even closer to the rabbits. There are three, one of them almost close enough to touch. If she moves her hand slowly, maybe she can grab one by the ears. Maybe she can catch one and train it to live inside. They need a pet rabbit. King Spanky is haunted. He spends most of his time outside. Her parents keep their bedroom door shut so that King Spanky can’t get in.
“Good rabbit,” Tilly says. “Just stay still. Stay still.”
The rabbits flick their ears. Carleton begins to sing a song Alison has taught them, a skipping song. Carleton is such a girl. Tilly puts out her hand. There’s something tangled around the rabbit’s neck, like a piece of string or a leash. She wiggles closer, holding out her hand. She stares and stares and can hardly believe her eyes. There’s a person, a little man, sitting behind the rabbit’s ears, holding on to the rabbit’s fur and the piece of knotted string with one hand. His other hand is cocked back, like he’s going to throw something. He’s looking right at her—his hand flies forward and something hits her hand. She pulls her hand back, astounded. “Hey!” she says, and she falls over on her side and watches the rabbits go springing away. “Hey, you! Come back!”
“What?” Carleton yells. He’s frantic. “What are you doing? Why won’t you let me come over?”
She closes her eyes, just for a second. Shut up, Carleton. Just shut up. Her hand is throbbing and she lies down, holds her hand up to her face. Shut. Up.
Wake up. Wake up. When she wakes up, Carleton is sitting beside her. “What are you doing on my side?” she says, and he shrugs.
“What are you doing?” he says. He rocks back and forth on his knees. “Why did you fall over?”
“None of your business,” she says. She can’t remember what she was doing. Everything looks funny. Especially Carleton. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Carleton says, but something is wrong. She studies his face and begins to feel sick, as if she’s been eating grass. Those sneaky rabbits! They’ve been distracting her, and now, while she wasn’t paying attention, Carleton’s become haunted.
“Oh yes it is,” Tilly says, forgetting to be afraid, forgetting her hand hurts, getting angry instead. She’s not the one to blame. This is her mother’s fault, her father’s fault, and it’s Carleton’s fault, too. How could he have let this happen? “You just don’t know it’s wrong. I’m going to tell Mom.”
Haunted Carleton is still a Carleton who can be bossed around. “Don’t tell,” he begs.
Tilly pretends to think about this, although she’s already made up her mind. Because what can she say? Either her mother will notice that something’s wrong or else she won’t. Better to wait and see. “Just stay away from me,” she tells Carleton. “You give me the creeps.”
Carleton begins to cry, but Tilly is firm. He turns around, walks slowly back to his half of the yard, still crying. For the rest of the afternoon, he sits beneath the azalea bush at the edge of his side of the yard and cries. It gives Tilly the creeps. Her hand throbs where something has stung it. The rabbits are all hiding underground. King Spanky has gone hunting.
* * *
“What’s up with Carleton?” Henry said, coming downstairs. He couldn’t stop yawning. It wasn’t that he was tired, although he was tired. He hadn’t given Carleton a good-night kiss, just in case it turned out he was coming down with a cold. He didn’t want Carleton to catch it. But it looked like Carleton, too, was already coming down with something.
Catherine shrugged. Paint samples were balanced across her stomach like she’d been playing solitaire. All weekend long, away from the house, she’d thought about repainting Henry’s office. She’d never painted a haunted room before. Maybe if you mixed the paint with a little bit of holy water? She wasn’t sure: what was holy water anyway? Could you buy it? “Tilly’s being mean to him,” she said. “I wish they would make some friends out here. He keeps talking about the new baby, about how he’ll take care of it. He says it can sleep in his room. I’ve been trying to explain babies to him, about how all they do is sleep and eat and cry.”
“And get bigger,” Henry said.
“That too,” Catherine said. “So did he go to sleep okay?”
“Eventually,” Henry said. “He’s just acting really weird.”
“How is that different from usual?” Catherine said. She yawned. “Is Tilly finished with her homework?”
“I don’t know,” Henry said. “You know, just weird. Different weird. Maybe he’s going through a weird spell. Tilly wanted me to help her with her math, but I couldn’t get it to come out right. So what’s up with my office?”
“I cleared it out,” Catherine said. “Alison and Liz came over and helped. I told them we were going to redecorate. Why is it that we’re the only ones who notice everything is fucking haunted around here?”
“So where’d you put my stuff?” Henry said. “What’s up?”
“You’re not working here now,” Catherine pointed out. She didn’t sound angry, just tired. “Besides, it’s all haunted, right? So I took your computer into the shop, so they could have a look at it. I don’t know, maybe they can unhaunt it.”
“Well,” Henry said. “Okay. Is that what you told them? It’s haunted?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Catherine said. She discarded a paint strip. Too lemony. “So I heard about the bomb scare on the radio.”
“Yeah,” Henry said. “The subways were full of kids with crew cuts and machine guns. And they evacuated our building for about an hour. We all went and stood outside, holding on to our laptops like idiots, just in case. The Crocodile carried out her rubber-band ball, which must weigh about thirty pounds. It kind of freaked people out, even the firemen. I thought the bomb squad was going to blow it up. So tell me about your weekend.”
“Tell me about yours,” Catherine said.
“You know,” Henry said. “Those clients are assholes. But they don’t know they’re assholes, so it’s kind of okay. You just have to feel sorry for them. They don’t get it. You have to explain how to have fun, and then they get anxious, so they drink a lot and so you have to drink, too. Even the Crocodile got drunk. She did this weird wriggly dance to a Pete Seeger song. So what’s their place like?”
“It’s nice,” Catherine said. “You know, really nice.”
“So you had a good weekend? Carleton and Tilly had a good time?”
“It was really nice,” Catherine said. “No, really, it was great. I had a fucking great time. So you’re sure you can make it home for dinner on Thursday.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Carleton looks like he might be coming down with something,” Henry said. “Here. Do you think I feel hot? Or is it cold in here?”
Catherine said, “You’re fine. It’s going to be Liz and Marcus and some of the women from the book group and their husbands, and what’s her name, the real estate agent. I invited her, too. Did you know she’s written a book? I was going to do that! I’m getting the new dishwasher tomorrow. No more paper plates. And the lawn-care specialist is coming on Monday to take care of the rabbits. I thought I’d drop off King Spanky at the vet, take Tilly and Carleton back to the city, stay with Lucy for two or three days—did you know she tried to find this place and got lost? She’s supposed to come up for dinner, too—just in case the poison doesn’t go away right away, you know, or in case we end up with piles of dead rabbits on the lawn. Your job is to make sure there are no dead rabbits when I bring Tilly and Carleton back.”
“I guess I can do that,” Henry said.
“
You’d better,” Catherine said. She stood up, with some difficulty, and came and leaned over his chair. Her stomach bumped into his shoulder. Her breath was hot. Her hands were full of strips of color. “Sometimes I wish that instead of working for the Crocodile, you were having an affair with her. I mean, that way you’d come home when you’re supposed to. You wouldn’t want me to be suspicious.”
“I don’t have any time to have affairs,” Henry said. He sounded put out. Maybe he was thinking about Leonard Felter. Or maybe he was picturing the Crocodile naked. The Crocodile wearing stretchy red rubber sex gear. Catherine imagined telling Henry the truth about Leonard Felter. I didn’t have an affair. Did not. Is that a problem?
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Catherine said. “You’d better be here for dinner. You live here, Henry. You’re my husband. I want you to meet our friends. I want you to be here when I have this baby. I want you to fix what’s wrong with the downstairs bathroom. I want you to talk to Tilly. She’s having a rough time. She won’t talk to me about it.”
“Tilly’s fine,” Henry said. “We had a long talk tonight. She said she’s sorry she broke all of Carleton’s night-lights. I like the trees, by the way. You’re not going to paint over them, are you?”
“I had all this leftover paint,” Catherine said. “I was getting tired of just painting with the rollers. I wanted to do something fancier.”
“You could paint some trees in my office, when you paint my office.”
“Maybe,” Catherine said. “Ooof, this baby won’t stop kicking me.” She lay down on the floor in front of Henry and lifted her feet into his lap. “Rub my feet. I’ve still got so much fucking paint. But once your office is done, I’m done with the painting. Tilly told me to stop it or else. She keeps hiding my gas mask. Will you be here for dinner?”
“I’ll be here for dinner,” Henry said, rubbing her feet. He really meant it. He was thinking about the exterminator, about rabbit corpses scattered all across the lawn, like a war zone. Poor rabbits. What a mess.
* * *
After they went to see the therapist, after they went to Disney World and came home again, Henry said to Catherine, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I don’t want to talk about it ever again. Can we not talk about it?”
“Talk about what?” Catherine said. But she had almost been sorry. It had been so much work. She’d had to invent so many details that eventually it began to seem as if she hadn’t made it up after all. It was too strange, too confusing, to pretend it had never happened, when, after all, it had never happened.
* * *
Catherine is dressing for dinner. When she looks in the mirror, she’s as big as a cruise ship. A water tower. She doesn’t look like herself at all. The baby kicks her right under the ribs.
“Stop that,” she says. She’s sure the baby is going to be a girl. Tilly won’t be pleased. Tilly has been extra good all day. She helped make the salad. She set the table. She put on a nice dress.
Tilly is hiding from Carleton under a table in the foyer. If Carleton finds her, Tilly will scream. Carleton is haunted, and nobody has noticed. Nobody cares except Tilly. Tilly says names for the baby, under her breath. Dollop. Shampool. Custard. Knock, knock. The rabbits are out on the lawn, and King Spanky has gotten into the bed again, and he won’t come out, not for a million haunted alarm clocks.
Her mother has painted trees all along the wall under the staircase. They don’t look like real trees. They aren’t real colors. It doesn’t look like Central Park at all. In among the trees, her mother has painted a little door. It isn’t a real door, except that when Tilly goes over to look at it, it is real. There’s a doorknob, and when Tilly turns it, the door opens. Underneath the stairs, there’s another set of stairs, little dirt stairs, going down. On the third stair, there’s a rabbit sitting there, looking up at Tilly. It hops down, one step, and then another. Then another.
“Rumpelstiltskin!” Tilly says to the rabbit. “Lipstick!”
Catherine goes to the closet to get out Henry’s pink shirt. What’s the name of that real estate agent? Why can’t she ever remember? She lays the shirt on the bed and then stands there for a moment, stunned. It’s too much. The pink shirt is haunted. She pulls out all of Henry’s suits, his shirts, his ties. All haunted. Every fucking thing is haunted. Even the fucking shoes. When she pulls out the drawers, socks, underwear, handkerchiefs, everything, it’s all spoiled. All haunted. Henry doesn’t have a thing to wear. She goes downstairs, gets trash bags, and goes back upstairs again. She begins to dump clothes into the trash bags.
She can see Carleton framed in the bedroom window. He’s chasing the rabbits with a stick. She hoists open the window, leans out, yells, “Stay away from those fucking rabbits, Carleton! Do you hear me?”
She doesn’t recognize her own voice.
Tilly is running around downstairs somewhere. She’s yelling, but her voice gets farther and farther away, fainter and fainter. She’s yelling, “Hairbrush! Zeppelin! Torpedo! Marmalade!”
The doorbell rings.
* * *
The Crocodile started laughing. “Okay, Henry. Calm down.”
He fired off another rubber band. “I mean it,” he said. “I’m late. I’ll be late. She’s going to kill me.”
“Tell her it’s my fault,” the Crocodile said. “So they started dinner without you. Big deal.”
“I tried calling,” Henry said. “Nobody answered.” He had an idea that the phone was haunted now. That’s why Catherine wasn’t answering. They’d have to get a new phone. Maybe the lawn specialist would know a house specialist. Maybe somebody could do something about this. “I should go home,” he said. “I should go home right now.” But he didn’t get up. “I think we’ve gotten ourselves into a mess, me and Catherine. I don’t think things are good right now.”
“Tell someone who cares,” the Crocodile suggested. She wiped at her eyes. “Get out of here. Go catch your train. Have a great weekend. See you on Monday.”
* * *
So Henry goes home, he has to go home, but of course he’s late, it’s too late. The train is haunted. The closer they get to his station, the more haunted the train gets. None of the other passengers seem to notice. It makes Henry sick to his stomach. And, of course, his bike turns out to be haunted, too. It’s too much. He can’t ride it home. He leaves it at the station and he walks home in the dark, down the bike path. Something follows him home. Maybe it’s King Spanky.
Here’s the yard, and here’s his house. He loves his house, how it’s all lit up. You can see right through the windows, you can see the living room, which Catherine has painted Ghost Crab. The trim is Rat Fink. Catherine has worked so hard. The driveway is full of cars, and inside, people are eating dinner. They’re admiring Catherine’s trees. They haven’t waited for him, and that’s fine. His neighbors: he loves his neighbors. He’s going to love them as soon as he meets them. His wife is going to have a baby any day now. His daughter will stop walking in her sleep. His son isn’t haunted. The moon shines down and paints the world a color he’s never seen before. Oh, Catherine, wait till you see this. Shining lawn, shining rabbits, shining world. The rabbits are out on the lawn. They’ve been waiting for him, all this time, they’ve been waiting. Here’s his rabbit, his very own rabbit. Who needs a bike? He sits on his rabbit, legs pressed against the warm, silky, shining flanks, one hand holding on to the rabbit’s fur, the knotted string around its neck. He has something in his other hand, and when he looks, he sees it’s a spear. All around him, the others are sitting on their rabbits, waiting patiently, quietly. They’ve been waiting for a long time, but the waiting is almost over. In a little while, the dinner party will be over and the war will begin.
TIGER MENDING
Aimee Bender
My sister got the job. She’s the overachiever, and she went to med school for two years before she decided she wanted to be a gifted seamstress. (What? they said, on the day she left. A surgeon! they told her. You could be a treme
ndous surgeon! But she said she didn’t like the late hours, she got too tired around midnight.) She has small motor skills better than a machine; she’ll fix your handkerchief so well you can’t even see the stitches, like she became one with the handkerchief. I once split my lip, jumping from the tree, and she sewed it up, with ice and a needle she’d run through the fire. I barely even had a scar, just the thinnest white line.
So of course, when the two women came through the sewing school, they spotted her first. She was working on her final exam, a lime-colored ball gown with tiny diamonds sewn into the collar, and she was fully absorbed in it, constructing infinitesimal loops, while they hovered with their severe hair and heady tree-smell—like bamboo, my sister said—watching her work. My sister’s so steady she didn’t even flinch, but everyone else in class seized upon the distraction, staring at the two Amazonian women, both six feet tall and strikingly beautiful. When I met them later I felt like I’d landed straight inside a magazine ad. At the time, I was working at Burger King, as block manager (there were two on the block), and I took any distraction offered me and used it to the hilt. Once, a guy came in and ordered a Big Mac, and for two days I told that story to every customer, and it’s not a good story. There’s so rarely any intrigue in this shabberdash world of burger warming; you take what you can get.
But my sister was born with supernatural focus, and the two women watched her and her alone. Who can compete? My sister’s won all the contests she’s ever been in, not because she’s such an outrageous competitor, but because she’s so focused in this gentle way. Why not win? Sometimes it’s all you need to run the fastest, or to play the clearest piano, or to ace the standardized test, pausing at each question until it has slid through your mind to exit as a penciled-in circle.
In low, sweet voices, the women asked my sister if she’d like to see Asia. She finally looked up from her work. Is there a sewing job there? They nodded. She said she’d love to see Asia, she’d never left America. They said, Well, it’s a highly unusual job. May I bring my sister? she asked. She’s never traveled either.
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