‘Goodness,’ Mommy said. ‘What in heavens is that all about?’
‘I don’t know. They didn’t get to me yet; they’re going alphabetically. The girls won’t say. They all looked kind of upset when they came out.’
‘You know,’ Mommy said, ‘it doesn’t surprise me.’
‘No?’ I can almost hear the dachshund lady lean forward, anticipating.
‘Think about it. All that business with money. Where’s the money going, I’d like to know? We’re running the same ward we always have, on the same budget. Why is there suddenly so little to go around?’
‘Wow,’ says the dachshund lady on an indrawn breath. ‘Do you think there’s some kind of … scam or something going on at the hospital?’
‘It is not for me to say,’ Mommy said in her gentlest voice. ‘But I wonder, that is all.’
I heard the dachshund lady make a clicking sound with her tongue. ‘It never made sense to me, that they fired you,’ she said. ‘If I said it once I said it a million times. Now, that would explain things.’
Mommy didn’t answer and I imagined her shaking her head with her gentle, quizzical smile.
I started to feel upset, I didn’t know why. So I got into the old chest freezer. I pulled the lid down on top of me and I felt better straight away.
I lost some time after that. When I came back I was still in the freezer, or there again more probably. I heard the dachshund lady’s voice, and the scent of cigarette smoke trickled under the kitchen door from the living room. The kitchen was a little different. The tulips that had been on the windowsill were gone. The walls looked dirtier.
‘It’s a scandal.’ Mommy’s voice. ‘Throwing stones! They have broken every streetlight on this road. I blame the parents. Kids need discipline.’
I pushed open the kitchen door. The two women looked up at me in surprise. Mommy was wearing a green blouse and slacks. Through the window the day was cold, framed by bare twigs. The shaggy terrier sitting by the dachshund lady wasn’t a dachshund. It raised its brown-and-white head, blinking in the cigarette smoke. She was the terrier lady, now.
‘Go on, Teddy,’ Mommy said, gentle. ‘There is nothing to worry about. Finish the job application.’ I closed the door and went back to the kitchen where the application for the auto shop in town sat half finished on the counter.
It wasn’t the same day and I didn’t go to school any more. I had been kicked out for punching the boy by the lockers. Mommy thought it was better I stay home anyway. I was a help to her. I had never before lost so much time at once. I tried to collect the brief flashes of memory that gleamed in my mind. I was twenty or twenty-one, I thought, Mommy worked at the daycare, now, not the hospital. But actually she didn’t any more, because she had just been fired again, because people were mean.
I felt the difference in my body. I was bigger. Like, a lot bigger. My arms and legs were heavy. There was reddish hair on my face. And there were more scars. I could feel them on my back, itching under my T-shirt.
‘Meheeeeeco,’ the terrier lady is saying through the door. ‘I’m going to have a cocktail with breakfast every day. One with an umbrella.’ She has been looking forward to her vacation for weeks. ‘That nice Henry is coming with me. The one who packs the bags at the Stop and Go. Twenty-five years old, what do you think about that?’
‘You’re terrible,’ Mommy says. It sounds like a compliment and a judgement at the same time. I think about how old twenty-five is, and then how old the terrier lady is. Gross. She must be almost forty.
‘Sylvia thinks so too,’ the terrier lady says. She sounds sad, suddenly. ‘I never thought my daughter would grow up to be so judgemental. She was the sweetest baby.’
‘I am very lucky with Teddy,’ Mommy says, and I am filled with love for her. ‘He is always respectful.’
I wonder where Daddy is, and then I remember. Daddy left because I punched him in the head. I recall the crack of the bone against my knuckles, and look of the bruises on my hand. It is one of the many times I have been grateful that I do not feel pain. He felt it. I know that Daddy deserved it, but I have to search for the reasons why. It comes back to me in flashes. I had to hit him because he was yelling at Mommy. Calling her bad names, saying she was insane.
‘Tsk,’ Mommy says, breaking into my thoughts. I look up at her, grateful that she is there. ‘You have cut yourself on that knife, Teddy.’
I start and put the knife back in the drawer. I didn’t remember taking it out. ‘It’s fine, Mommy.’
‘Don’t take risks with your health,’ she says. ‘It needs disinfecting, and a couple stitches. I’ll get my kit.’
No, that didn’t happen then. I am in the wrong memory, now. Never call a woman insane. The feel of Mommy’s cool hands on my face and the sappy green scent of the woods in the springtime. No, that is not right, either. I try to find the thread of that day. I am almost panting with frustration. There was something important about it. But it is gone.
The second time Mommy brought me to the forest was for Snowball the mouse. I was in the living room, crying over the cage. What was left of him lay gleaming in a corner. The sawdust was brown and hung together in clumps. A lot of blood in such a small thing. I remember the taste of snot and fear. I clutched my yellow blanket to my face and it was soaking wet; the blue butterflies glistened with sadness.
I looked up and there she was in the doorway, watching
