Me and Mom Fall for Spencer

by Diane Munier

  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-dri
ven 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?”

  “Those mice were not little,” I correct. Cyro had some big fat mice squatting in his living room.

  The drapes take longer. I just don’t know. I am bent over, holding beige drapes in my hand, but it’s a loose weave and I know he won’t want people to see in. He’s got that cop-paranoia.

  Spencer walks his fingers across my back and I nearly scream, and I do that dance again and make noises and he laughs.

  A woman goes by and says to another, “Newlyweds.” And they laugh.

  Well that shuts us both down for a minute, and we gawk at one another, me and Spencer, then I hold up the package of drapes and we laugh.

  Newlyweds? We must look like we’re in phase one or something.

  We settle on some tightly woven beige curtains with a white lining. They cost a little more but I’m thinking they’ll be the ones he’ll like. No, he likes the filthy rags I took down today. So I can’t listen to Cyro.

  On the way home, we can’t be this close to the shelter and not drop in and say hello. So we go there and Spencer learns the Golden Retriever was adopted out that morning. He’s a little sad, or surprised.

  “You were thinking about adopting her yourself?” I ask.

  He says no, he wasn’t really. He says it doesn’t bother him so much.

  I have to see the three amigos, the lab brothers, Dusty, Lucky and Ned. I tell Spencer this. He asks which is which and I pick each one out.

  “Sure they’re not the Three Stooges?” he says cause they go wild thinking we’re there to walk them, and they are desperate to get out of here.

  I have this idea. I’m not ready to get another dog, but maybe I am. “There’s one for Cyro, one for me, one for you.”

  Spencer has been petting these dogs through their gate. Now he stands up and looks at me like he is seeing the crazy in me plain as day. “Cyro can’t handle a dog. He doesn’t even get out of that chair from what I saw today. And I’m not thinking of getting a dog. Not just any dog.”

  “Ned’s not a just any dog,” I say.

  “You mean Moe?” he says. “We’d be bringing three dogs onto one neighborhood street. The noise alone, the shit alone, the chaos. We’d be volunteering for it. Cyro would kill you if you brought him this hyper dog. These guys are all hysterical.”

  “They’re in a cage! If they could have a yard and move around, chase birds and stuff, they’d be normal.”

  “They’ve never been normal,” Spencer says, but then he speaks baby-talk to Ned/Moe while he rubs its frantically sniffing, snuffling nose.

  “They smell those mice on you,” I say.

  Spencer laughs. “They do not. I washed my hands.”

  “You used Cyro’s soap, that cracked white bar with the black flecks on it, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, don’t say it. Been there since the nineties. Man, even his soap is retro-disgusting,” Spencer says, and we laugh like crazy over that.

  “He’s so cute,” I say, meaning Ned as five minutes later he eagerly hops in the cab of my truck and starts sniffing over the seat. Spencer and I get in each side and slam our doors.

  “He’s just glad to be away from his brothers,” Spencer laughs, then to Ned, “Aren’t you buddy? I know what you mean, brothers are nuts and getting locked up sucks, huh Buddy.”

  I don’t say anything and Spencer swallows hard, but Ned between us means a tail in my face, and a nose shoved in his. He laughs a little and makes Ned get on the floor by his feet. He’s talking to him, calming him down and stroking his black fur. Spencer shoots me a look and I’m just looking back. But I don’t say anything, I just drive.

  Me and Mom Fall for Spencer

  Chapter Nineteen

  Spencer insists on keeping Ned with him while I return to Cyro’s and try to get enough order to call it a day. He’s so stubborn about it.

  “You’re welcome,” he calls as I’m walking away.

  I still haven’t opened the new file Aaron sent me.

  I finish putting all of the old magazine and newspapers that line Cyro’s walls in the trash cans. I make Cyro a couple of sandwiches and wash the filthy picture window and put the new drapes on the rod. Then I put some sticky traps around and try not to lose my nerve.

  Well Cyro isn’t happy about it. He won’t say anything, but he’s not yelling about it either. After I put his food on the tray I say, “See you tomorrow,” and he gives me a little speech about not needing to come over every day.

  “I’m going to chip away at it and it’s going to take me a while.”

  “I don’t want that,” he says, his voice so thick and heavy.

  “I’m going to do it because it’s the best thing.”

  “Hell it is. This is my house.”

  “Well you can have it, so you know.” Then I use Spencer’s deal, “Oh and you’re welcome.”

  That’s our goodnight then. I run across the street and I hear Ned barking in Spencer’s backyard and it feels like so much life coming from Frieda’s, it just keeps growing like seed in good soil, growing….

  Mom is already home.

  “You at Cyro’s?” she says, feet on the coffee table. There are two new cans of paint on the floor near her. “Gonna start on Spencer’s living room tonight,” she says, lift of her chin.

  “He know?”

  “Of course. He’s supplying the beer.”

  That throws me a little. I don’t know why. I have no claim on him, on his time at all. But he didn’t mention it--painting. Beers with Mom.

  “Christine is coming to help. You should too.”

  And Horny. Beers with Mom and Horny.

  We look at one another.

  “No thanks,” I say quickly. I have too much work and anyway, I’m not doing that.

  I look in the kitchen to see what produce I need to cook up before it goes bad. There’s some eggplant I need to fry so I do that and as I’m finishing Spencer is at my backdoor with Ned. “Sarah can I use your truck? I need to get this crazy dog some food.”

  “I got some,” I say because I do still have some from King. I get that out of the pantry and Spencer thanks me. He wants to pay and I say no.

  He asks me what I’m cooking. I open the door for him and Ned. “Come in and eat,” I say.

  “I can’t eat with you again,” he says, but I want him to. I don’t get tired of him for some reason.

  “This is pity…right?” He’s saying that, but Ned decides for him and enters, nose to the floor.

  I can’t pet him because I’m cutting up salad.

  Mom calls Spencer from the living room and Ned goes in to say hello, and Mom screams. Spencer hurries in there. He yells at Ned to get down.

  So there’s some chaos then and Ned comes slinking into the kitchen and goes under the table and lays there, his tail beating the floor with a couple of nervous thumps.

  Mom is talking to Spencer about painting. He seems to know about it. I wonder why he didn’t tell me, but he doesn’t have
a reason to.

  They seem friendly so I guess there are no hard feelings over the way she turned on him at the restaurant. I am relieved and sorry at the same time. I don’t know why people give Mom a pass sometimes. Well Fred didn’t. Not in the end.

  Spencer is back. “Can I have a piece of that?” he means the eggplant. I get a plate and hand it to him. I fill it for him so he isn’t confused. Pretty soon I’ll have salad. He pulls out a chair and sits right where I’m working. Ned gets on his feet, nails clicking on the tile. He sniffs toward Spencer and sticks his head out from under the table. Spencer speaks sternly to him. “You already had all my baloney.”

  Ned lies back down and his tail thumps again.

  “You tell Cyro about him?” The eggplant is hot but that doesn’t stop him from burning his mouth to take a bite. I get a bottle of water from the fridge and set it on the table. He breaks the lid and chugs. “Thanks,” he says when he sets the bottle. “This stuff is amazing.”

  He digs right into another piece and the steam breaks between the meat and the batter, but that doesn’t slow him down. His lips are shiny and he’s chewing fast, sips water and smiles at me. He has a piece of batter on his lips and his tongue goes there. Sheesh I’m staring.

  “You like to see people enjoy your food,” he says like he just figured something out. But he hasn’t figured out anything.

  I finish the salad and mix dressing and he watches while he eats and I mix the food and fill another plate for him and set it there. He hums when he digs into my salad. He rolls his eyes. “Oh man,” he says, and I hold on to the back of a chair and it’s so much fun to take care of him, to feed him. Ned is licking my feet.

  I squeal a little and step back quick and laugh cause I’m still creeped out from Cyro’s. I squat and scratch Ned all over and he rolls onto his back and groans.

  “You just stole him from me,” Spencer says. “He can’t resist you, Sullivan, he’s male.”

  I look up, and Mom is entering the kitchen. She looks at me and goes to the drawer and digs out a cigarette. I hadn’t realized they were in there. I’ll be throwing them out later.

  She lights a smoke and blows the haze over the table where my food sits. “Sure you don’t want to start tonight?”