Hall of Small Mammals

by Thomas Pierce

  “Felix.” Her hair is a damp frizzy explosion of blond. “You don’t mean that.”

  “I might.”

  “If you feel that way, then I suggest you keep your mouth shut about it. Give the guy a chance. You shouldn’t always assume the worst about people. The last thing you want is to make an enemy of the man who will be raising your son.”

  They are talking to each other’s reflections. Felix glances at his own. Geez, Gonuts sometimes says, you look like you just swallowed a furball. The furball: that JT will eventually be closer to Hank than Felix ever could, that Hank will come to think of JT like a father. It is inevitable. The kid is only four, and JT will be the man in his underwear at the breakfast table on Saturday mornings. With proximity, intimacy. Felix will be just some ghost on a phone line.

  “Shit, my moisturizer,” Laura says, digging in her orange toiletries bag. “I must have left it.”

  Felix unzips his own bag and produces the small plastic travel bottle that he spotted by the sink just before they left the apartment. He stands behind her and rubs some of the lotion into her shoulders. “See, we’re good for each other. I keep you moisturized, and you call me on my bullshit.”

  “Well, it’s just that sometimes you’re your own worst enemy.”

  “And that’s exactly why I need you here. My enemy’s enemy is my friend.”

  She bumps him away with her butt and smiles. “Go change.”

  He slides into a fresh pair of dark jeans and puts on a gray blazer. “I’m not going downstairs to sit at the bar,” he says. “I’m not going to drink as many whiskey drinks as I can before Bet’s dad gets here.”

  “Be down in a minute,” Laura calls from the bathroom.

  The bar, Felix discovers, is empty. None of the little glass bowls have any nuts in them. Rod Stewart rains down from the overhead speakers. Felix sits down on a stool and drums on the bar’s wooden lip. “Helloooo,” he calls, but no one emerges through the door between the liquor shelves. He considers hopping the bar and grabbing a bottle of whiskey and a glass. He doesn’t require any ice.

  “Felix,” Mr. Ash says. He is standing at the entrance to the bar in a dark blue suit, his red tie loose. “I thought I might find you in here.”

  Felix isn’t sure if he should be offended or not. He settles on not.

  “I’d offer to buy you a drink but”—Felix gestures at the bar—“it’s like The Shining in here. Do you get that vibe? Redrum.”

  “I was told you were bringing someone.”

  “She’s upstairs. Down in a sec.” Felix taps on the bar. Then scratches his face. Then lets his arms hang. He can’t seem to find the right thing to do with his hands. “Excited about the wedding?” The easy question.

  “Of course I am. So long as Bet is happy, I’m happy.” He sits down at a table and kicks out one of the chairs for Felix. “I won’t lie. JT isn’t exactly who I had in mind for her. But then again, neither were you.”

  “Please, tell me how you really feel, Nick.” Felix rarely uses Mr. Ash’s first name. Even now, after all these years, it feels indecent. He sits down across from the man. “But it did happen kind of fast, didn’t it?”

  “Eight months.”

  “Has it been that long? I feel like I only heard his name yesterday.”

  “Selective hearing, I guess,” Mr. Ash says.

  Neither of them says anything for what feels like minutes. “But the thing about Hank is,” Mr. Ash says, as if continuing some conversation that has been playing out in his head, “he’s really a sweet kid. And smart. I’ve already got him reading. It’s incredible. And he’s taking piano lessons, did Bet tell you?”

  “He played ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’ for me over the phone the other night. Not too shabby.” Felix knows all about the reading and the piano breakthroughs and about Hank’s recent gummy worm addiction. Bet—dependable, lovely Bet—keeps him informed. Her name for these updates: Another installment in the Adventures of Hank. Mr. Ash is a recurring and popular character in Hank’s adventures, the one who makes Hank the three-layered grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner, the one who brings home new sodas from all over the world. Though Mr. Ash had naturally been upset to discover that his daughter was pregnant by a foulmouthed comedian, one who had no intention of “doing the right thing” (not that he would have been much happier if she’d done the “right thing” with Felix), Mr. Ash fully embraced his role as a grandfather. He loves Hank, and for that Felix is of course grateful.

  “How’s Susan doing?” Felix asks. Bet’s mother has rheumatoid arthritis and recently had her knee replaced. “She back on her feet yet?”

  “She’s still on a cane,” he says. “You should have seen what they replaced her knee with. She’s a real bionic woman now. They’re doing the other one after the wedding. You know, I think once this wedding hoopla is over with, Susan won’t know what hit her. I don’t even think she realizes yet how different things will be once Hank and Bet are out of the house.”

  Felix nods. Out of the house. Part of his anxiety about the wedding stems not from the fact that Bet and Hank are moving into JT’s house but that they are moving out of Nick and Susan Ash’s. He can’t help but wonder if this change will somehow put the boy at a disadvantage.

  “How far away does JT live?”

  “Little less than an hour. Just outside of town. It’s not going to be easy.” He seems more wistful than Felix has ever seen him. He uncrosses his legs. His eyes narrow. “So, Bet tells me that show of yours is really taking off. I confess, I haven’t seen it yet and I don’t claim to understand half of what they put on television. But that must feel good? Some validation after all these years?”

  “Sure,” Felix says, “I suppose so.” Though he in no way considers his success on Pets! a validation of all his hard work, he doesn’t want to squelch that idea for Bet’s father, who until this moment has never offered Felix a single encouraging word regarding his career. Early on in their relationship, after too many drinks, Mr. Ash once let it slip that he thought Felix was a silly man, not at all serious, one of those types who complained about everything but never did anything. “Well,” Felix said to that, “I’ve actually considered jumping into the soda industry. I have an idea for a soda that comes in a baby bottle. Get ’em started early, right? First, though, we might have to wipe out the milk lobby.”

  “Do people really think you’re funny?” Mr. Ash asked. “Because I don’t see it.”

  “Honestly, I don’t either,” Felix said, which like all good jokes was grounded in truth. Throughout all of it—the club circuit, the bit parts here and there on bad television shows, the one-hour comedy special that almost happened but didn’t—Felix’s career had bumped and bounced, but it had certainly never soared. The closest he might ever come to mainstream success is as Gonuts the CGI Hamster whose most popular catchphrases are increasingly difficult to voice without feeling a little sick.

  When Laura comes downstairs, finally, they leave the hotel in Mr. Ash’s car. Laura sits in the front passenger seat. With the air-conditioning on full blast, Felix can’t hear their conversation, but Laura is smiling and nodding quite a bit, her hands prim in her lap. Prim is not an adjective Felix frequently associates with Laura. Vivacious, maybe. Vital. Voluptuous. Felix is stuck on v’s. For the dinner she has changed into a conservative blue dress that falls just below the knee, but she still has on her giant white sunglasses.

  The Ashes live in a three-story house with dark colonial shutters on all the windows and squat dome lights planted in the mulched beds on either side of a brick sidewalk that connects the circle driveway to the front door. Susan comes out first on her metal cane and gives Felix a frail hug, then hugs Laura. Bet comes outside next, a new pixie haircut, eyes bright and blue. Felix has been slightly uneasy about this moment, about introducing these two women, Bet and Laura, past and present, and he watches them examine each other surr
eptitiously while they make small talk, moving toward the house. Hanging behind the group for a brief moment just outside the door, Laura squeezes Felix’s arm and mouths the words, She’s very young, before moving ahead of him into the foyer.

  • • •

  Describing his relationship with Bet to others—particularly to women his own age—Felix has learned over the last few years to omit certain details. For instance, that Bet was a sophomore art history major when he impregnated her. Why mention such a thing? There is no need to vilify himself unnecessarily. She looked young then too, yes, but not that young, and he certainly didn’t need to convince her of anything. She was a more-than-willing participant.

  But there are other details he omits. For instance: He has not told Laura about what happened the winter after Hank was born—when he flew down to Atlanta for a two-week visit with his new son. He was staying in a room at the Commodore but after the first two nights, since he was already spending so much time at the house, Mrs. Ash insisted that he stay in one of their guest rooms. That way Felix could find out what it was like to rock a six-month-old back to sleep at three a.m.—a gift, she said, that no new parent should be denied. Mr. Ash, in particular, seemed giddy setting up the baby monitor in Felix’s room.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of it,” Bet said before bed. “Besides, babies are mostly math. Ounces eaten. Hours slept. You’ll see.”

  The crying began sometime just after midnight. Felix did his duty, creeping down the hall and peering in on the little red-faced crank, who shook his tiny arms like they were meant for flight. Felix hoisted him out of the crib and nestled down in the rocking chair across the room, humming a little Van Morrison. The Van Morrison worked nicely. Hank calmed down, his eyes heavy again, but when Felix tried to deliver him back down into the crib, Hank went off like a car alarm.

  “There’s a trick to it,” Bet said, small face in the door. Felix wasn’t sure how long she’d been watching him. “Do what you were doing before.”

  He sat back down in the rocking chair and started humming the horn section of “Into the Mystic.” Bet, in a loose and ghostly nightgown, hovered near the crib. When Hank quieted down again, she motioned for Felix to bring him over. At the crib, she told him to blow gently on Hank’s face while lowering him down.

  “Really?”

  She nodded and smiled. He blew gently, and Hank’s nose scrunched up like he might sneeze. But when his butt hit the blanket, he actually stayed quiet. In the hallway, Felix asked her what that was all about.

  “I have no idea why it works, but it does. I figured it out by mistake.” She blew gently in Felix’s face. “Feels nice, right?”

  He kissed her. Later he wouldn’t remember what exactly had prompted him to do it. Maybe it was her blowing in his face. Maybe it was a quick but powerful feeling that all of this was theirs—this baby, this life, this house, this night-light shining around their bare feet. She pulled him into her bedroom, next door to the baby’s. She lifted her gown and stretched back on the bed. He kept his feet on the floor and leaned toward her, arms on either side of her shoulders. It was different from their first time at the hotel, almost a year earlier—less hurried, less boozy—and as he finished, he said it, or something like it, like or love or, the old Annie Hall joke, luff. But then again, maybe he hadn’t. He might have only sighed pleasantly. No, he’d certainly said something. He kissed her on the shoulder and said he should probably get back to his room. “Okay,” she said.

  The next morning, at breakfast, he avoided eye contact with all of them. The Ash family whirled around the kitchen, dishes clattering as they unloaded the washer, discussing plans for the day, a Saturday, and Bet breast-fed Hank at the table. Watching the three of them, Felix felt like an intruder. He had an impulse to run, but he finished his cereal and then showered, whistling in the steam.

  They spent the day Christmas shopping. In the car, Mr. Ash asked Felix if he even believed in Jesus, and Felix said, “Jesus . . . Jesus . . . didn’t he drum for the Beatles before Ringo?” Mrs. Ash looked back at Felix scandalized. “Sorry,” Felix said. At the mall, he wandered through a toy store alone with Hank, who seemed to like the lights and colors and not much else. Then they went to find Bet and discovered her in the neighboring department store, checking the tag on a mannequin’s jacket.

  “You like it?” she asked. “I think I could wear it in the spring.”

  “Let’s see it on you.” With Hank gurgling in his arms and Bet wrestling the jacket off the mannequin, Felix forgot, just for a moment, that this wasn’t his everyday existence. She bought the jacket, and they strolled through the mall together, like any other couple, hands on the stroller.

  That night she snuck into his room after her parents were asleep and climbed into bed. On the monitor they could hear Hank breathing through the fuzz of static. She was on top of him, and he certainly wasn’t resisting. “You okay?” she asked. He wasn’t sure what to make of that and shrugged up at her: yes, he was okay. When they finished, she fell asleep on his arm and didn’t wake up again until Hank started crying in the early hours, milky light in strips across the bedspread.

  In all, this happened three more times before Felix flew home. She would sneak into his room and stay until Hank’s first morning fit. She did this without ever asking what it meant or where it was leading. Each time, afterward, Felix felt more agitated, as if the stakes were that much higher, though he tried not to show it. What was he doing? Possibly he cared for her more than he’d realized. He began to doubt his initial decision to stay on the West Coast. He even entertained notions of bringing her back West with him. His apartment would be too small for both Hank and Bet, but he could find something more suitable. If he really wanted to, he could make this work, couldn’t he? When Bet drove him to the airport, she gave him a short kiss and asked him to text when his plane landed.

  “Maybe you and Hank could come and visit me sometime,” he said, and when she nodded, he added, “To see how you like it out there.”

  Had he been too subtle? Not subtle enough? He couldn’t tell. Her cheeks were pink and she smiled uncertainly. “Okay,” she said.

  On the flight home, he tried watching a movie but couldn’t concentrate. He folded the vomit bag into tinier and tinier squares. He drank three whiskey-and-sodas. The woman sitting beside him asked if he was feeling all right. Felix wasn’t sure. “I used to be the same way,” the woman said. “Have you ever listened to the black box recording from a plane crash? Don’t. They’re all on the Internet. It’s addictive. It always ends one of three ways. It’s either Oh, God or Oh, shit or Oh, no, the flaps! Religion, panic, or blame. Every time I fly now, I think, Well, that’s it. So long, farewell. There’s no possible way I’m going to survive this.”

  “There are worse ways,” he said. But really, every flight felt like a little death. What died was the place you were leaving and the person you’d been there. The more distance between him and Atlanta, the less real it all seemed to him—the Ashes, Hank, Bet, all of it. The only inescapable constant was himself: miserable, unfunny Felix.

  Waiting for his suitcase at the baggage claim back in Los Angeles, he called Bet’s cell despite the time difference.

  “Hey,” she said, surprisingly not groggy.

  “I’m here and—” His bag approached. “And that’s it, I guess. I’m here now.”

  “Good,” she said. “I’m glad. Hank already misses you.” She cleared her throat, and he could hear a door close. “Listen, Felix, I’ve been thinking. About what happened this week. Going forward, I don’t think we should complicate things, you know?”

  Felix grabbed his bag and wheeled it back and forth across the baggage claim floor as Bet explained all the reasons why it didn’t make sense for them to be together. She had no intention of leaving Atlanta, and though she’d always care for Felix, she wouldn’t love him, not like that. When she asked him what he thought, he sai
d that, yes, well, she was absolutely right, it would never work. Only later—weeks later, trying to recall Bet’s exact tone during this conversation—would he wonder if it had been some sort of test. Regardless, they didn’t discuss it again. Whether Bet had told her parents about what had happened between them, Felix couldn’t be sure, but they never offered him a guest room again. After that, he began staying exclusively at the hotel.

  • • •

  Hank comes stomping down the stairs after an especially long afternoon nap, looking a little bit like a high Shakespearean actor: red tights, wild brown hair, eyes a tad droopy. Felix holds out his arms for a hug, a little worried that he is about to be rebuffed in front of Laura and Bet and the Ashes. JT, who is apparently a master chef, is in the kitchen preparing a “gourmet” dinner. Hank launches off the bottom step and lands in Felix’s arms. Felix spins his son’s legs out like a helicopter. They all file into the living room for an early round of cocktails—vodka tonic for Laura, screwdriver for Bet, whiskey for Felix and Mr. Ash, and a seltzer for Mrs. Ash, who rarely drinks any alcohol aside from white Zinfandel. They sit in a rough circle, encamped on various pieces of antique furniture: a green leather sofa, the two wingback chairs, the ottoman under the flatscreen on the wall.

  “Lovely house,” Laura says, taking it all in. “Bet, won’t you be sad to leave in a few months?”

  “I will,” she says, and squeezes her father’s arm thoughtfully. “But I’ve been imposing long enough. It’s not fair to my parents.”

  “We’ve loved every minute of it,” Mr. Ash says.

  Felix wonders if it is guilt—for living off her parents, for delivering chaos into their otherwise peaceful golden years—that is pushing Bet toward a man like JT. Her fiancé seems nice enough and is even mildly handsome in a second-place-homecoming-king sort of way, but he is certainly no genius; his face doesn’t suggest much depth. Felix begins inventing a quiz: What book is on JT’s nightstand? Can he name the last ten presidents in order? Who was responsible for 9/11? Though Felix won’t be able to explicitly call it a test, that’s what it will be. Over the course of the evening, he will have to sneak in his questions and keep track.