Me and Mom Fall for Spencer (11 page)

My finger follows its path beneath the worn
out thread on my shirt. The scar keeps me anchored to myself and I know that
this day like all the others I have had since…this day is my second chance.

Cyro
isn’t in his chair. He’s in the back room. Says he isn’t getting up.
Says to go away.

I get busy.

Me and Mom Fall for
Spencer

Chapter Eighteen

There’s a mouse running around
Cyro’s
and I have a thing about it. At first I’m being real
respectful with
Cyro’s
stuff but this kind of dirt
makes me mad, mad at Jason, mad at
Cyro
, mad at Mom,
myself, Fred. Don’t get me started.

I’m just mad. I look out the dirty
window enough though, once I find it under all those haunted layers of casket
lining he’s got over the glass like he can keep out the world, or keep himself
in or both, I don’t know.

I rip it all down and the light, though
not bright because the rain won’t fall but it threatens, it’s there, and it’s
cooled things off, but even still there’s enough dust in this room to come
together and re-skin a full grown man.

And then I see Spencer over there, what
the heck is he up to? Cutting his grass with Frieda’s old mower, the kind
without a motor, just some good spit and muscle behind it, those old blades
haven’t tasted the wet green grass in two decades, and I go to the door just to
listen, to hear their whirr that’s more like
Cyro
clearing his throat.

Spencer has his shirt off and he’s
pushing, insisting the thing work, and it is. But man, Spencer is digging in
and straining forward. He only has on the beige shorts and his underwear
showing around the waistband, and his tennis shoes on without socks.
Shirt in his back pocket.
I just like looking at him. It
gives me some kind of crazy energy. This must be how Horny lives, all this
energy. I have it now. I knew she was contagious.

“Take a picture,”
Cyro
says finally stumping into the room. I heard his noise, but I didn’t think
about it. That’s how wiped my mind is seeing Spencer. “What in the hell are you
doing with my stuff? I
ain’t
leaving that window
uncovered like that. What in the hell are you messing with my things for?”

“Good to hear you care about something!”
I yell back because I am not putting those stinking ghosts up at his window. He
doesn’t have his zipper up or his belt done. “Snowing down south,” I say
because we’re going to have standards.

He drops into his chair. “It looks like
hell in here.”

“That’s
cause
you can finally see hell!” I know it’s not kind to say something about the
situation. If you’re going to help, keep your mouth shut and help, I say to
myself. But it’s hard work and
Cyro’s
bad attitude on
top of it sucks.

“You can get busy in the kitchen. You’re
in my way here,” I say, knowing he’s not going to budge.

He picks up the remote and turns on his
ancient television. I’m surprised it even works with a remote. It’s big and
probably heavy as a refrigerator. He turns it up pretty loud. I go to the
vacuum cleaner and turn it on and it’s not nearly loud enough, but it coughs
out a cloud of dust, like we need
more,
and it makes a
lot of noise but doesn’t pick up shit.

I snap it off. “
Cyro
,
I swear it’s like your whole life just stopped in the nineties.”

Well, that was pretty mean. He doesn’t
say anything, but it’s just so bad that I said that. I hurt Spencer last night
and now
Cyro
. It’s just better if I never talk again.

But that mouse shoots across the floor,
too close to my feet and I take off screaming and run out the door.

I am out there, clear to the middle of
the front yard before I can stop myself, bent over, hands on my knees because I
have a thing about mice and I just knew that one was going to run up my leg. I’m
breathing and this whole job looks pretty hopeless.

Then I feel that hand on my shoulder. I
straighten up and thunder crashes just then. “Sarah what happened,” he says.

Spencer Gundry can’t have a bad day. It’s
just not possible. Without a shirt, well I’m glad I’m probably already red in
the face from the rodent. I surely am now. The rest of us have eyes and a nose,
features thrown on our faces like a handful of dice thrown for craps, a little
bit of Mom a little bit of Dad, but Spencer, he just shows us the possibilities
for the human race and now we know…it could have been better. He lucked out. That’s
it.

I don’t try to answer his question
because I can’t remember it.

“Sarah?”

“What?”

“What happened?”

He looks ready to fight…defend my honor
or something.

“I…saw a mouse,” I say.

More thunder. Spencer breaks out
laughing.

“You better get that grass cut,” I warn.

“You going to be alright or do I need to
call an ambulance.”

I pull away from his hand a little and
he lets go.

“I’m fine,” I say.

“Okay. Well, after I’m finished, or the
rain finishes me, I’ll come over and help.
If you want me
to.”

I never thought about it one way or the
other.
Cyro
won’t like it
cause
he doesn’t even want me in there and I’m practically family. I think I am.

“It will be okay,” I say.

I turn and walk stoically into the
house. How do I do it…walk stoically? I just imagine a stick up my ass and I
take off.

Cyro
is watching television. He doesn’t even look up. I do a quick scan of the
floor.

“He got a shirt?” he asks, so I guess
he’s had the ambition to have spied on me and Spencer on the lawn. All he had
to do was turn his head so it’s entirely possible.

“He’s mowing,” I say.

I abandon the living room, and tackle
the bathroom.
Cyro
yells at me, tells me to get out
of there, but I ignore him. I’m wearing some rubber gloves I found under the
sink but even these gross me out. I’ve gagged a couple of times, but I’m
hanging tough.

So about a half hour in I hear Spencer
talking to
Cyro
. I can’t imagine what he’s saying,
something about sports. They talk for a minute and
Cyro
calls for me.

“I’m coming,” I say
cause
I’m in the shower stall, scrubbing the last of the gray film off the floor with
some old toothbrush. I should get some kind of heavenly reward for this.
Something.

When I think I’ve finally got it looking
decent I take the big bottle of bleach I find in the basement, don’t even get
me started on what it is like going into that chamber of horrors, and pour a
final coat over the floor. I turn on the cold water and the fumes about gag me.
Once it’s rinsed a little I peel off the big yellow gloves and throw them in a
bucket and go in the hall.
 

“Wow,” Spencer says. He can see me from
his seat in the living room.

“That bad?”
I ask,
cause
I guess I’m sweaty.

Spencer has thrown on a shirt, a white
T-shirt as usual. It’s not overly clean either. The rain is finally here.

“Oh there it is,” I say pointing at the
mouse that just ran under Spencer’s chair.

“Where,” Spencer says. He’s up like a
shot, grabs a magazine off one of the piles and rolls it. No sooner does he do
that the mouse shoots right in front of his feet. He tries to stomp on it but
it’s too quick.

It runs toward me in the hall and I
scream and run to the bathroom and shut the door. I can hear
Cyro
laughing through the wood, and Spencer grunting in the
hall and cursing. Then a big laugh, a, “You see that?”

And
Cyro
laughing.
“He’s in there!”

Spencer is across from me, in the
kitchen now. “C’mon Mickey, c’mon you little asshole, show those beady eyes,”
he’s saying.

I crack the door and see Spencer
crouched a little holding the roll, turning slowly around.

I widen the crack, stick my head out,
look down the hall and run back into the living room.
 
At least the thing is in the kitchen now.
Cyro
says how that little mouse is more afraid of me than I
am of him. Like that helps.

Then we hear commotion in the kitchen
and Spencer stomping around, slapping the magazine,
cursing
.
I am standing on the chair screaming.

Cyro
is laughing. I haven’t heard that in a long time. Just a little on game night,
but not as much as this.

Spencer comes out of the kitchen holding
a dead mouse by the tail. I think I’m going to faint.

“Don’t bring it in here!” I yell.

I hope he’s not the kind to tease
because I’m not just being dramatic.

“Need some exposure therapy for that
massive phobia Sullivan?” he says looking plainly evil.

“No!” I yell.

“Oh. She can sure talk up a storm when
she wants to,” he says.

Cyro
says, “Tell me about it.”

“Throw that thing away Spencer!” That
was just like Mom would say it in the classroom.

“Alright.
Calm down.” He goes back in the kitchen.

“And wash your hands!” I say.

“Yes ma’am,” he says.

I am so relieved I step down and pat
over my fluttering heart. “Thank God.”

Spencer is in the hall. “Um Sarah, you
might want to get back up there. One just ran between your feet.”

I am back in the chair with one leap. “Are
you lying?” I scream.

But he isn’t. I stay in the chair and
scream while Spencer chases down and kills five more mice.

Calling him a hero doesn’t even begin to
cover it.

We are on our way to the store. The rain
has let up but more is coming. It’s so gray outside it’s sucked all the color
out of the grass.

I am worn out. And I look like a hillbilly.
I feel like one. We are going to Big-Mart for mouse traps and drapes.

It’s a weird combination but we pretty
much live out of Big-Mart. It’s our general store and we are the coal miners in
her debt. Well not me, but I imagine a lot of folks are. But Mom would owe our
souls if I didn’t pay them off at the end of the month.

Screaming at rodents has broken me down.
Spencer has taken all my power now. He is the one. I have shown him my weakness
in such an unvarnished way I am no longer protective of myself as a person. I
have no dignity, possibly no self-worth. I’m giddy and talkative. I can’t
shut-up.

We’ve been laughing and yelling. It’s
like we’re drunk. “I swear he hasn’t laughed like that since the nineties. His
whole life is there. I swear,” I say, repeating myself, embarrassing myself,
but I don’t really care.

Well I’ve been running off, diarrhea of
the mouth, and that analogy comes out of cleaning
Cyro’s
bathroom, and even the word analogy has ‘anal’ in it.

I don’t even know who I am anymore. Maybe
I never did.

“A girl as brave as you
afraid of a little mouse?”

“Six! Six!”

“They had an apartment complex in there
in those magazines and newspapers.”

“All the way back to
the nineties!
Did you look?”

Spencer and I are close now. I can never
redeem myself for deserting him. He loves it, I think.

At the store we have a blast. We look
through the various methods of mice removal—no-bait traps, no-kill traps,
enclosed traps,
sticky
traps, poison in bars or
pellets. “Get a couple of each, each thing so if they figure out one, there’s
something else.”

He thinks that’s a waste of money. “You
are fear-driven on this, Sullivan. Not rational.” He knocks on my head, but it
is a soft knock and he tugs my messy pony tail. And I am looking at him
cause
he is looking at me.

“What?” I say.

“Nothing,” he says, but we look a little
more and he rubs his thumb on my cheek and I blink but I don’t move. “You’ve
got a smudge…,” Spencer says.

I have to say something so I tell him
this store is crawling with mice, too, because I knew a girl who worked here
once, before they made it a super store and she said every time they moved a
shelf, mice took off running in every direction.

Now I am so grossed out I wanted to take
off running out of here. So I prance around a little and make a noise
cause
I’m feeling so crawly.

“That
ain’t
true,” he scoffs like I’m a sucker for mice stories.

We settle on sticky traps, but that
makes me want to scream, the very idea of some mouse flailing on one of these
traps. I can’t bear it I don’t think.

“You scrubbed that bathroom with a
toothbrush and you can’t look at a little mouse?”