Set This House in Order (20 page)

It happened as she was leaving for school. Mouse was on her way out the door when her mother—who up to that moment had appeared to be in the sweetest of humors—suddenly grabbed her by her bad wrist and pulled her up short, demanding: “Now what did we agree about that Trash Town boy?”

Mouse, who had no idea what they had agreed, had to think quickly: “I'm never going to speak to him again!”

“Goddamn right you're not,” her mother snarled, though that seemed to be the correct answer. Smiling pleasantly again, she added: “Now when you come home today I may not be here, but I don't want you to worry. I have a little errand to run.” Her head bobbed with a barely suppressed fit of giggles. “You just wait here for me to get back, and don't go answering the door to any strangers!”

That day at lunch Ben Deering tried to sit with her again. She saw him coming towards her table, braced herself to put him off—

—and found herself in class, shutting her notebook as last bell rang.

Ben Deering, Chris Cheney, Scott Welch, and Cindy Wheaton were standing in a group on the front steps of the school as Mouse left the building. They all stared at Mouse, openly hostile but nervous, too, as if they
were afraid Mouse might attack them. Mouse, afraid they were planning to attack
her,
scurried past as quick as she could. “You're a fuckin' crazy girl, you know that?” Cindy Wheaton shouted at her back.

The house was empty when Mouse got home. At first this was a relief, but by dinnertime, when her mother had still not returned, Mouse began to worry. Maybe the house wasn't really empty after all; maybe her mother, instead of being out on an errand, was actually hiding somewhere, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. The fact that Mouse was getting hungry did not help her nerves any.

Finally, about an hour after dark, her mother came home, in such a triumphant good mood that Mouse became even more worried. Her mother didn't say where she'd been, just pinched Mouse on the cheek and set about fixing a late supper. She made lamb chops with mashed potatoes and creamed spinach, one of Mouse's favorite meals: a very bad omen.

They were almost done eating when the doorbell rang. “Now I wonder who
that
could be,” Mouse's mother chuckled, and ran to answer it. She'd been gone only a moment or two when she began yelling: “Penny! Penny, you get out here
right now!
”

Penny
. Mouse's mother only called her by her true name in front of strangers—usually strangers she was trying to fool in some way. Wondering what new game was afoot, and how much it was going to hurt, Mouse slid down out of her chair and followed the sound of her mother's shouts.

Mouse was astonished to find Ben Deering at the front door—Ben Deering, and a tall man who she guessed was Ben's father. Ben looked both sullen and embarrassed, and he was trying hard not to make eye contact with anyone, especially Mouse; Ben's father and Mouse's mother were angry, though Mouse had an intimation that only Ben's father's anger was real.

“Is this her?” Ben's father asked, nodding at Mouse.

“Yes,” Mouse's mother said, as if it pained her to admit it. “That's my daughter.”

Mouse shied back a step, thinking that the tall man might be about to hit her, but instead he turned to his son and said, “Well?”

Ben sighed, and with an almost theatrical effort made himself look Mouse in the eye. “I'm sorry,” he said.

Apparently this wasn't sufficient; no sooner were the words out of his mouth than his father smacked him hard on the back of his head. “You're sorry
what?
” Ben Senior said.

“I'm sorry about the bet I made,” Ben recited grudgingly. “I'm sorry I
tried to trick you. It was wrong.” He glanced up at his father as if to add:
Is
that
enough?

“All right,” said Ben Senior. “You go wait in the car for me.” Ben eagerly obeyed.

“Well,” Ben Senior said, turning his attention to Mouse. He seemed to expect her to recite something now, but she only blinked at him, so he cleared his throat and went on: “As you can see, my son got your message. Or rather, we
all
got your message.”

My message?
thought Mouse, and Ben's father, noting her perplexity, growled: “Oh, for pity's sake!” Mouse shied back another step.

“For pity's sake…” Ben's father jammed a hand in his coat pocket. “The message I'm referring to, young lady—as if you didn't know—is the one you pitched through our living-room window earlier this evening.” He brought out a chunk of brick with a tattered sheet of paper wrapped around it. Mouse had never seen the brick before, but when Ben's father smoothed the paper out she recognized it as her memorandum. For a horrified second she wondered what she had done. Then she remembered her mother's “errand.”

“Penny!” Verna Driver's feigning of outrage was flawless. “Penny, my goodness, what's gotten into you? How could you
do
such a thing?” As she said this she turned, and when her back was to Ben's father she let the outrage-mask drop, revealing impish glee beneath; she stuck her tongue out at Mouse, and winked. “Oh, Mr. Deering,” she continued, putting the mask back in place, “Mr. Deering, I'm so very sorry, I can't tell you how
shocked
I am by this.”

“The boy acted badly,” Ben's father said. “But”—he hefted the brick—“vandalism is not an appropriate response.”

“Oh, of
course
not!” Mouse's mother said. “I don't know what Penny—”

“Neither is what you did at the school today, young lady,” Ben's father added. “Yes, my son told me about that, too.”

“At the school today?” The outrage-mask slipped a bit. “
She
did something…at the school?”

“An uncontrolled temper is a dangerous thing,” Ben's father said ominously. “I'll leave these with you,” he continued, offering the memorandum and the chunk of brick to Mouse's mother, “and ask that you keep your daughter away from my son and away from my house.”

“You can be sure of
that,
” Mouse's mother said, the mask slipping a notch further, revealing an edge of malice. Then she caught herself, and went on soothingly: “Of course we'll pay for the damage to your window.”

But Ben's father, perhaps sensing that something was not right here, said: “Never mind the damage. You just rein in your daughter before she hurts somebody. An uncontrolled temper…” he concluded, jabbing a warning finger at Mouse. He turned and left.

“‘You just rein in your daughter before she hurts somebody,'” Mouse's mother mimicked to his back, discarding the mask. As the Deerings drove away, she asked: “What happened at the school?”

Mouse had just been wondering the same thing. Casting back over the events of the day, she recalled something that hadn't really registered at the time: when she'd passed Ben and his friends outside after class, Ben's hair was mussed, and his jacket and shirt were covered with splotches: dried food stains. “I think I dumped my lunch tray on Ben,” Mouse said, in her smallest voice.

“You
think
you did?” Her mother shot her a sideways glance, and for a third time Mouse shied back. But then her mother burst out laughing, and threw an affectionate arm around her. “Well, I guess we showed those Trash Town bastards!” she crowed. “So, would my little Mouse like some ice cream?”

That was the end of the Ben Deering matter, at least as far as her mother was concerned. For Mouse herself it wasn't really over, of course; word of the brick-throwing and food-dumping incidents spread quickly at school, and Mouse, now a certified “crazy girl,” became a magnet for taunts and abuse.

Then one morning about two weeks later, a school circular appeared mysteriously in Mouse's book bag. Mouse found it as she was packing away her homework, and her mother, who was hovering nearby, snatched it out of her hands before she could get a good look at it.

“What's this?” her mother said, scanning the circular. Her eyes widened, and she began to read more carefully, growing more and more excited. “Why, this is wonderful!” she exclaimed. “What a wonderful opportunity!” She turned, casually jabbing Mouse in the head with her elbow. “Why didn't you tell me about this last night?”

Mouse, wincing from the jab, could only shrug. When her mother was finished reading she took the circular back, and examined it herself. “Dear concerned parent,” it began,

Right away Mouse noticed something peculiar. The paper was official school letterhead, but the text was typed, not mimeographed the way a regular circular would be, and the typewriter's tendency to drop its u's was oddly familiar. Some years ago Mouse's grandmother had given her an old Underwood manual typewriter that had dropped its u's that way; then Mouse's mother, irritated by the gift, had gone out and bought Mouse an expensive electric typewriter, and insisted she throw the Underwood away, which as far as she knew she had. But it seemed strange that the school's typewriter would have the exact same fault as the discarded Underwood, and the same typeface too—strange enough to make Mouse wonder why she couldn't remember actually putting the Underwood in the trash.

The “exciting new extracurricular program” described in the circular was pretty strange, too. What it was, once you got past the fancy language, was a pen-pal program. The English Society of International Correspondents set up letter exchanges between “exceptional” American high school students—Mouse had a very hard time applying that adjective to herself—and even more exceptional British boarding-school students, many of whom, the circular hinted, were members of the nobility. The apparent purpose of this, on the American side at least, was a sort of cultural osmosis—through long-distance exposure to the young lords and ladies of England, the American high schoolers would be elevated from exceptional to superexceptional status, thereby ensuring the brightest possible futures for themselves. What the British kids were supposed to get out of it the circular didn't say.

To Mouse, the whole thing seemed frankly ridiculous. It also seemed like a prank. There
was
a pen-pal program at school, but it involved sending postcards to poor village kids in Africa and Asia, an activity about as suitable for Verna Driver's daughter as volunteering at a soup kitchen in Trash Town.

“You're signing up for this,” Mouse's mother said. “You're signing up for this
today.
”

“OK,” said Mouse.

And she tried to. She skipped out of lunch early and went to the after-school-program office, where the administrator Mr. Jacobs scratched his head and said he'd never heard of the English Society of International Correspondents.

“I'm sorry,” Mr. Jacobs said. “I
could
sign you up for the Third World Postcard Buddies program, if you'd like…”

“No thank you,” said Mouse.

“Well, then.” He handed the circular back to her. “If I do hear some
thing, I'll contact you, but it seems like this is probably a joke of some kind.”

Of course it was a joke. But now Mouse had a problem, because she was going to have to go home and tell her mother that she hadn't done as she was told, that she
couldn't
do it. Thinking this, she felt a tickle in her left palm, and looked down to find a graffito written on her bare skin in ballpoint pen: JUST PRETEND YOU DID.

And Mouse nodded to herself, and washed her hands, and after last bell she went home and told her mother she'd signed up for the letter-writing program. And a surprisingly short time after that the first of many envelopes from the English Society of International Correspondents appeared in the Drivers' mailbox. Mouse, who found it there, shook her head in disbelief at the return address, and also at the stamp: a colorful two-pence stamp, with a portrait of Queen Elizabeth and a smudged cancellation mark that did not extend onto the envelope itself. The stamp looked as though it had been glued in place with rubber cement.

Two pence,
Mouse thought.
Two pennies.
Was that enough to mail a letter all the way from England to America? She very much doubted it, and her doubt churned up a memory of being in Bartleby's on Third Street with her mother not long ago. Bartleby's sold fine stationery, and also had a small section devoted to stamp and coin collecting. You could buy canceled foreign stamps there…or steal them, Mouse supposed.

The envelope was a prank, like the circular before it. Mouse would have destroyed it if she dared, but she didn't dare, and anyway by now her mother had seen it and grabbed it from her and was cooing over it, with none of Mouse's skepticism.

“Let's see what we've got here,” Mouse's mother said. Too impatient to get a letter opener, she attacked the envelope like a grizzly bear ripping into a honeycomb. The simile was apt: having torn open the flap, she actually stuck her nose inside—and jerked back, as if stung. She tried again, reaching in more carefully with a pawlike hand—and jerked that back too. “Damn it!” she swore. “Damn it! Damn it!
Damn it! FUCK!
” The fit of fury vanished as quickly as it had come, and was replaced by a sullen petulance. “Here,” she said, shoving the envelope at Mouse. “You do it.”

When Mouse carefully spread the top of the envelope and peeped inside, she found neither honey nor stinging bees, but a second, smaller envelope, addressed simply “From Miss Penelope Ariadne Jones, To Miss Penny Driver.” Mouse saw at once what had upset her mother: the inside envelope was purple.