Nell

by Nancy Thayer

  Clary was in college when Nell’s children were born and she worked all summer to make money for college, so Nell and Marlow saw very little of Clary those four years. The summer Clary graduated with a degree in biology, she came up once to visit her father and his family. In spite of the years of friendship between Nell and Clary, that visit had been a disappointment.

  It was the last year of Marlow and Nell’s marriage, although they did not know that yet, and the air between them was tense with unadmitted anger. Clary could stay only two days, and both those days Hannah and Jeremy, then two and four, were sick with a ghastly intestinal flu. Nell was tired, overweight, and generally miserable. But she was so excited about seeing Clary that she shampooed her hair, put on makeup, and stuffed herself into her best dress. The moment she heard Clary’s car pull into the driveway, she grabbed the wailing, sick Hannah from her crib and raced to the top of the stairs.

  She stood on the landing a moment, just looking at Clary, who had come in the door and was kissing her father and who looked, all of a sudden, grown-up and devastatingly lovely. Clary had had her thick blond hair cut Dutch-boy style and it swung evenly at her shoulders, making her seem substantial and decisive, a woman who knew what she wanted. The blunt bangs across her forehead accentuated Clary’s dark brows and eyes. She turned, and looked up at Nell with a frank, almost stern look. Nell knew at once that Clary had become a person to be reckoned with in the world.

  Nell was so glad to see her, this person who was part child of hers, part friend, and she started down the stairs, hoping she looked at least not dowdy in her blue dress.

  “Clary!” she called.

  And at that moment poor Hannah, who was in Nell’s arms, threw up. Thick white vomit erupted from the sick baby’s mouth and flowed in a milky waterfall down Nell’s dress and, as Nell watched, down one step and the next step and the next. Warm acid-smelling liquid coated Nell’s arm and dress. Hannah cried and choked. Nell had to comfort and clean her poor daughter, then turn to the stairs. The thick vomit had soaked the carpet. It was not an easy task cleaning up the mess.

  The visit did not much improve from that moment. Clary seemed to Nell to have become elegant, self-sufficient, and haughty. She was impressed with herself for gaining a degree in biology, and she talked endlessly about the experiments she was doing on gypsy moth research at a lab in Connecticut. She was doing important work in the world.

  Nell scrubbed the carpeted stairs, fixed and served dinner, tended to sick children, and listened to Clary when she had the chance, but as each moment passed, Nell felt more and more hopeless. She thought she must look such a drudge to Clary. She envied Clary’s flat stomach, trim hips, smooth skin. She envied Clary her youth, her freedom, her clothes; she envied everything of Clary’s. And Clary didn’t do anything to make Nell feel better. She scarcely looked at Jeremy and Hannah, and when she did look at them, it was with a sort of scientific scrutiny, as if the babies were bugs or some other kind of slightly bizarre form of life. Nell cried that night when she went to sleep, because she felt old and somehow forlorn.

  The next year, when Marlow and Nell were separated and then divorced, Nell didn’t know whether to contact Clary or not. Clary was Marlow’s daughter, after all, not hers. People tended to choose sides during a divorce, and it was only right that Clary would choose her own father. Blood tells, Nell thought. Besides, Clary had made it pretty clear that she had no interest in Nell or her messy children.… Nell did not call. That Christmas Nell sent Clary a card and pictures of the children and received a card and a cool message in return. But the summer after that, one long evening when Nell was wandering around picking up the toys that the children she babysat had strewn across every possible surface of the house, she began to think of Clary, of the good times they had had together. On impulse, she called Clary and they talked for an hour, spilling out the news of the past year, getting to know each other again. They began to write, to call. Finally, their friendship faced what Nell would always in the back of her mind call the rat test.

  The summer that Hannah was four and Jeremy was six, Nell had done a thoroughly modern thing: She had left her children with her ex-husband, their father, and driven down to spend a weekend with her ex-stepdaughter.

  By this time, Clary had given up on gypsy moths, or rather the government grant ran out and she had gone to work at a lab at Rutgers. She lived in a small apartment in Piscataway, New Jersey, with a roommate named Sally, who was a waitress at a local bar because she couldn’t get a job teaching school. Sally and Clary were both pretty, single, and clever; they had worked their life together into a sort of chic comedy routine. They slopped around in baggy painter’s pants and tiny striped cotton shirts, drank countless beers, bopped around their apartment singing Devo songs. Nell sat in their living room drinking beer and just watching, thinking. Here was Clary, who had been thirteen when they first met; here was Clary, who had started having periods the first summer she stayed with Marlow and Nell; here was Clary now, a grown woman, a sexual sophisticate, a competent lab technician. Clary and Sally taught Nell to play a game called asshole dice. They drank more beer. Around midnight they decided to smoke some grass, but Nell declined and said she wanted to go to bed. It was not that she cared whether they smoked or not, it was just that whenever she had tried grass she had anxiety attacks. She didn’t need grass anyway, tonight; she was already in a strange enough land. Here she was visiting her ex-stepdaughter, who had been thirteen and was now twenty-two, and she, Nell, didn’t feel any older at all. Here she was visiting her ex-stepdaughter, who had spent part of the evening telling Nell about her latest lover’s strong and weak points in graphic detail. Here she was visiting her ex-stepdaughter, who told her that she would sleep on the living room sofa so that Nell could have her bedroom.

  “The rats won’t bother you,” Clary said. “They make a little noise at night, but you’ll get used to it.”

  Clary worked with lab rats at Rutgers and had taken two home as pets. Carlos was a white rat with pink eyes, Sophia gray and white with black eyes. They were not large rats, but they were live rats, complete with long buck teeth and very long, skinny, rubbery tails. They lived in a cage at the foot of Clary’s bed. They had an exercise wheel and other toys.

  Rats were intelligent, Clary said, more intelligent, more affectionate, than gerbils or hamsters. They made great pets. Nell told Clary she didn’t want to put her out of her own bedroom; she, Nell, would be delighted to sleep on the living room sofa. But Clary and Sally were planning to stay up till three, watching a horror movie and smoking grass, and there was nothing for Nell to do, once she had made the announcement that she was tired, but to go to bed in Clary’s bedroom with the rats rustling and chittering in their cage all night long.

  Nell stayed with Clary for two nights. They talked and laughed and drank and went to a movie and ate pizza and Nell was happy. She and Clary had reestablished their connection. Now that they were no longer bound by their association with Marlow, they discovered they were bound by something stronger: They had known each other for a long time, they had gone through changes, and they still liked each other, not as family, but as friends. In spite of the fact that Nell didn’t sleep well for two nights—she really couldn’t help but fear those rats might get out of the cage—she considered the visit a complete success.

  In March of the next year, Nell got a phone call from Clary. Sally was going off to Mexico with a lover, and Clary had to change apartments. She had found a new roommate in a new location, but the landlord did not allow pets of any kind. She wondered if Jeremy and Hannah might like to have her rats.

  Nell was speechless. She knew that if she insulted the rats, she would be obliquely insulting Clary: Love Clary, love her rats. These were baby rats, Clary hastened to add in the long-distance silence caused by Nell’s dismay. Sophia and Carlos had lived out their natural lives and gone on to rat heaven; Clary had just gotten these new baby rats three weeks ago. They were so tiny, so cute, and if Jeremy and
Hannah played with them every day, they’d become the sweetest pets.… Clary wanted to drive up during the weekend with the rats. She’d bring a cage; she’d show Jeremy and Hannah how to care for the rats.

  Nell hesitated. She wanted so very much for Marlow’s children, Clary and Jeremy and Hannah, to get to know and like one another, and here was the first chance that had presented itself. She did not want to turn Clary down. But rats … Finally, she told Clary to come ahead and tried to sound enthusiastic as she spoke.

  It was a five-hour drive from Piscataway to Arlington. Clary arrived on a Saturday afternoon with the two rats, an old aquarium with wire over the top to make a cage, a sack of pine chips, and a bag of Purina Rat Chow.

  Nell sat on Jeremy’s bed, smiling, as Jeremy and Hannah, enraptured, let the baby rats run up their arms. Jeremy let his rat go under his shirt and run along his chest and stomach. Nell could see the outline of the little body and the long thin tapering tail through the cotton of her son’s shirt. She felt there was something unnatural about watching a rat run over her son’s body—she felt a primitive revulsion at the sight—but she bit her tongue. The children were so happy, and Clary was sitting on the floor talking to them, writing out a list of instructions.

  The rats were to have fresh water put in their drinking bottle every day. They were to be given dry spaghetti or noodles every day. They needed hard stuff to chew or their front teeth would grow too long and they wouldn’t be able to eat. Jeremy and Hannah should never approach the cage and stick their hands in without warning; this would scare the rats. The children should gently tap on the cage and make a little chittering sound before reaching in. The rats would soon learn that this meant a friend was near and would be picking them up. Every now and then the rats could be given a treat, but not too much sugar, which was bad for them. Clary had often made scrambled eggs for her rats; they liked that sort of thing.

  Nell had sat on the bed, looking at Clary, marveling. Clary, who was so blond and tall and sleek and lovely, who could have done anything, was here before her, seated cross-legged on the floor, writing serious instructions about rat care. How strange people’s lives were.

  Clary spent the night with them before going back to New Jersey, and it was a successful visit, with much laughter. Jeremy and Hannah kissed Clary good night when they went to bed and again when she left. They looked at Clary with earnest faces as she admonished them to be good to the rats: “Be nice to the rats, and they will be the best pets you’ve ever had,” she said seriously as she bent to kiss them goodbye. Her face was as earnest as theirs. She was such an elegant, regal-looking young woman; she looked like a queen handing over a charge. Nell knew there was nothing for her to do but to survive with the rats, to remind the children to feed them, love them, let them out for exercise, clean their cage. This was not what she would have chosen to bring these three people together, but it was what had presented itself, and she tried to be grateful for it. The important thing was that now Clary and Jeremy and Hannah were in touch, had a mutual interest.

  So she lived with the rats. She made rules. One week Jeremy got the cage and the responsibilities in his room and the next week Hannah got it. She kept an eye on the children’s friends and limited the amount of visitors, reminding the children that too many eager little hands might harm or frighten the rats. She vetoed the children’s plan to sell tickets to other children to see the rats. She doled out dry sticks of spaghetti to her children so that the rats would not get long teeth, and she told them yes, she thought it was adorable how the little rats sat up in the cage and reached out their skinny little hands to grab for the noodles. When both her children spent the night at friends’ houses, she fed the rats herself, although she could not bring herself to let them out for exercise. She tapped on the cage, went “Chee-chee-chee,” to the rats, just as Clary had said. She stuck her own hand down into the cage to drop the pellets and the apple slices and the spaghetti. “Here, little rats,” she said. “Here’s your D-Con.”

  The rats seemed to thrive. Then one evening Hannah stuck her hand in to pick up her rat and the rat lunged and bit her hand. Hannah ran to Nell, crying. Nell put medicine on the small bite and read Clary’s instructions aloud to Hannah: Rat bites were cleaner than human bites. These rats were lab rats with no disease, no germs. If by any chance at all one of the rats got scared and bit, they were not to worry, it would be a clean bite. Rat mouths were much cleaner than human mouths. Nell tried to be reassured by Clary’s instructions.

  But the next day, when Jeremy reached in to pick up his rat, Hannah’s rat bit him. Nell put medicine on his wound.

  “We’ve got to go ‘Chee-chee-chee’ more,” she said to her children.

  “But I did, Mom, I did!” Jeremy protested.

  “Well, do it more!” Nell said. “This rat is obviously scared.” That evening, however, both children were reluctant to stick their hands in the cage. Nell found an old pair of gardening gloves and put one on. She tapped on the cage, went “Chee-chee-chee,” then spoke to the rats in her sweetest, kindest, most soothing voice. When she stuck her hand into the cage to drop the dry noodles, the gray and white rat rose up on its hind legs and, as fast as a snake striking, lunged at Nell’s hand. It snatched at her hand with its long scrawny fingers and bit.

  “That does it,” Nell said, jerking her hand away, shaking with disgust and fear even though the rat had not been able to get through the gardening glove. “This rat is going.”

  “Mom, we can’t kill it,” Jeremy said. “That’s not fair. Maybe it’s just a cowardly rat. Maybe it’s just sensitive.”

  “I don’t care what its psychological problems are,” Nell said. “We are not keeping this rat any longer. I will not have this rat biting any other person.”

  Jeremy made a fuss, but Hannah, who had had her feelings hurt because her rat bit while Jeremy’s didn’t, agreed with Nell. They wanted to call Clary to ask her advice, but she had moved apartments without leaving her new number or address, and she was using her new roommate’s phone and had told Nell only the roommate’s first name.

  Finally, Nell carried the cage with the rats in it out to the car and they drove to the country. There, she and the children went through an elaborate procedure, involving sticks and gloved hands, in order to get the bad rat out of the cage without having it bite and still prevent the good rat from running away, too. At last the bad rat was out in the countryside. It ran off into the tall grass. Nell drove home, exhausted. This escapade had taken three hours out of their Sunday afternoon. And Hannah was teary, thinking there was something intrinsically wrong with her that made her rat bite, and Jeremy was grumpy and worried, saying that now his rat would be lonely.

  Three nights later, at bedtime, Jeremy called Nell to his room. “Look at my rat,” he said.

  His rat was huddled in a corner of the cage, shrunken into itself, not responding when Jeremy tapped on the glass. Nell put the gardening glove on and put her hand into the cage. She dropped a fresh slice of apple in. “Chee-chee-chee,” she said.

  The rat did not respond except to shiver weakly.

  “God, Jeremy,” Nell said. “I think your rat is sick.”

  “But it can’t be,” Jeremy said. “I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve done everything Clary said!”

  “I know, honey. But it’s sick. Listen, let’s take it down to the kitchen. I can’t stand the thought of you going to sleep in a room with a sick rat in it.”

  They carried the cage downstairs and set it in the middle of the kitchen table. The rat fell over on its side and lay there, limp.

  Jeremy started to cry. “I loved that rat,” he said. “I took the best care of it I could.”

  At this point Nell got paranoid enough to wonder if this entire rat bit was some bizarre and convoluted ex-stepdaughter’s revenge on Clary’s part. She tried to soothe Jeremy. She promised him the rat would be better in the morning. Finally, she called a friend of hers who was a vet.

  “Marilyn,” Nell said, “
I’ve got a problem. Jeremy has a pet rat and it’s sick. What can I do? I know it’s too late tonight to bring the rat into the clinic, but can you give me any advice?”

  Marilyn laughed. “Nell,” she said, “people have been trying for thousands of years to find out how to destroy rats. Rats are the best survivors on the planet. That rat will either get well by itself or die.” She laughed again. “You would have a sick rat.”

  Nell translated the conversation into a more optimistic and kindly message for Jeremy: “Marilyn said that rats are very hardy creatures and that this rat will undoubtedly be better soon.” It didn’t entirely convince Jeremy, but it worked well enough to get him to go off to bed.

  Just before Nell went to bed, she returned to the kitchen to check the rat. It was shivering, and when Nell came close to the cage, it began to cry out in tiny whimpers. “Eeee-eee-eee,” it went, and Nell looked at its limp dreadful body and was overcome with pity and revulsion.

  “I’m sorry, rat,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.” She still did not know how to locate Clary. She truly did not know what to do. Finally, she heated some milk and set it, in a small plastic bowl, inside the cage, close to the rat’s face.

  She arose early the next morning and hurried downstairs, wanting to get to the rat before the children saw it. She was certain it would have died overnight.

  But it had not died. It was now stretched out full-length in the cage on its back, its whole body wrenched with convulsions. It shuddered, its skinny legs jerked, and after one quick look, Nell raced to the kitchen sink and splashed cold water on her face, trying not to vomit. Then she went back across the kitchen to the phone on the wall and dialed Marilyn’s home number.

  “Marilyn,” she said. “I’m sorry to call you at home. But this poor rat is having convulsions. What can I do? The children will be awake any moment now. Can I bring it into the clinic? Will you please meet me at the clinic and give it a shot to put it to sleep?”