Lingering

 Lingering

Yah . . . it is true.  I do linger . . . loiter . . . take my time making my way home from school. Dawdling she calls it, like doodling, like I’m some stub of a pencil aimlessly inscribing a path through the snow covered street.   Dawdling. . .

            “Jack, get the hell in here right now.”  

I laugh (just in my head though).  She’s got on Sam’s old rubber boots, the black ones with the green stripe running ‘round them, with her jeans stuffed right down inside and dirty old  rubber bands stretched around the tops of the damn boots holding in her jeans.  She’s got those bright yellow rubber kitchen gloves on too, but that’s nothing new.  It’s the rubber bands I can’t get over - wrapped around her wrists and ankles like she doesn’t want to expose any skin or nothing. 

            Kali is propped on the floor in the living room crying; her dollhouse stuff is semi-circled around her caging her in, her half empty bottle lying just outside the arc of toys.   I can hear the twins, Jacob and Daniel, upstairs play wrestling and laughing and I hope they stay up there and keep it down, ‘cause I know someone’s in for it. 

Rubber-handed, she grabs me by the sleeve of my jacket—my favourite one, the navy hoodie that’s worn so it feels just right, the one that used to be Sam’s—and, yanks me into the hall. 

“For Christ’s sake, get the broom and kill it,” she says. 

Peeling gloves, reaching for her cigarettes, she heads out the front door for the porch.

           

Man, I should have guessed.  She must have been freaking out all afternoon.   I scoop up Kali and her bottle and plop her in the big armchair in the living room and make my way into the kitchen where the broom is tucked in beside the fridge.  

I feel queasy, sick inside.   I can smell the mouse now, close, heavy with rat poison, hiding somewhere, knowing, waiting for death.   The broom feels odd in my hands, too long for me, not sturdy enough.  I wish I had gloves.  I stop in the middle of the kitchen listening, waiting.  If I’m lucky, it’ll be in the kitchen and make a scurrying sound on the linoleum ‘cause I don’t want to think about having to search the rest of the house.   I stand there - oh so still - trying not to think, listening to the sound of my own heart.

Kali starts crying again and I have to go into the living room to soothe her. 

            “Kali, Kali, shh, shh, I need to listen for the mouse,” I say.

            A basket of unfolded laundry, greying socks and underwear, is piled high on the pink (dusty rose, she calls it) chesterfield and I pray that the mouse hasn’t curled up inside searching for its last warm bed.   I can hear the twins arguing now and I yell at them not to come downstairs.

I listen and wait.

I am sure I see movement in my peripheral vision and I feel a tight knot, a kind of ache, forming in my chest.  The movement is quick, but I am good at sensing their presence.  Sometimes I see them in my dreams—a tail disappearing under a pedal of the old piano or, worse, under the oven drawer.   My eyes scout the room wanting, and not wanting, to find that mouse.   Again, I wait and listen.  Kali whimpers. 

For one brief moment everything is still.

Across the room I see it:  the fish-shaped ceramic soap dish (the one I made for her last year in Ms. Abel’s Grade Five art class) resting on the mahogany end table by the armchair, a half-smoked cigarette crushed into its stomach.  Soiled.  Dirtied.  Two near-empty hi-ball glasses, liquid amber, ice not yet melted, stand by its side. 

Through the window I can see my mother in her ridiculous get-up pacing on the porch.  Some thing like anger rises inside me.   I look at Kali; she looks at me.  I raise my arms over my head and bring the broom down on the rug with a loud thwack.

My eyes lock with Kali’s, willing her not to be scared.  She giggles and that’s when I do see the mouse.  It’s sitting quietly, unmoving, bathed in a ray of sunlight in the corner by the TV.  I’m not sure what’s worse: when they scurry or when they just sit and wait for death.  I know I need to get it over with but I don’t think the mouse is going anywhere.  Kali smiles at me.  I inch forward and turn on the TV and flick the channels until I find Mr. Dressup.  

 I have an idea and I go back into the kitchen and get the dust pan from under the sink.   Back in the living room, the mouse is still there, basking in that bit of light.  I walk right up to it – no more than a foot or two away - and I can tell it’s alive because I can see it breathing now; but, it still doesn’t move. 

For a while I watch the mouse breathe, Mr. Dressup laughing with Casey and Finnegan in the background.  Then, ever so gently, I bring the broom down behind the mouse and slowly sweep it into the dust pan.  Its tail twitches, but the mouse doesn’t run, so I carry the dust pan to the back door and set it outside on the steps.   I don’t know what to do because the mouse won’t get off the dust pan, so I just leave it out there, dust pan and all.

            Tomorrow I’ve got a spelling test.  I grab my backpack from the front hall and climb the stairs to my room, stopping on the way up to wrestle a bit with the twins.    My room is the small one: two single beds with not much space between, a beat up desk that used to be my Dad’s when he was a kid, a cubby hole of a closet. There is no space for a dresser.  My desk is covered with junk – old comic books, rocks, feathers, beer caps - stuff I’ve collected and can’t seem to part with - kid stuff.  I flop on my bed with my spelling words. 

We are on “F”.   The words move on the page flowing and merging into one another:  FALLACY, FRAGILE, FORTUITOUS, FRAUGHT . . .    

I look over at Sam’s empty bed and the knot forms in my chest again.  I can hear her in the kitchen, Kali in the living room gurgling happily, Mr. Dressup opening the tickle trunk humming and singing, Jacob and Daniel racing one another down the stairs.  I don’t go down for dinner.

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            It is spring now and I still linger on the way home from school making small waves in the puddles, soaking my runners through to my socks.  Now that the snow is gone I find more rocks and feathers.  It is warm enough that my hood is off and the sun feels good beating down on my face promising summer.  

            “Jack, get in here and get the broom,” she calls.

            I take my time.  In my mind, I can see the drink glasses on the end table – sweat rings forming on the wood, a half inch of Bacardi and coke,  pale now, long since diluted by melted ice.

“Why the hell can’t he kill the effing mice?” I say, but . . .  just in my head.