“It was a mouse!” I blurted.
“A mouse game,” Leslie said. “Robin pretends to be a mouse and crawls under my bed, and I have to catch her.”
Grandma Betty seemed to swell. “Your father has to get up for work in the morning.”
“I know. It was all my fault,” Leslie said. “I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to play the game.”
Grandma Betty adjusted her translucent nightgown. Through it I could see her cotton underwear with the lace stitching around the waistband. “Kitchen floors tomorrow, and silverware, Leslie. Don’t make another noise.”
She shut the door and locked it behind her, plunging us into nightlight-gloom again.
“Leslie?” I whispered.
Leslie got out of her bed and climbed into mine, stroking my hair. I fell asleep before I could remember what I had wanted to say, listening to the tink, tink, tink from underneath Leslie’s bed.
In the morning she was already in the shower before I woke up. I got on my hands and knees and crawled under the bed. The overturned glass was still there; I supposed Leslie had been too scared to do anything about it. I gave the glass a sharp poke and it tipped over onto the carpet. The mouse was revealed. A girl mouse, gray and cream, with long silver whiskers. It was too exhausted to run; it only dug its claws into the carpet and twitched. I picked it up by its tail and put it in my backpack to take to school with me.
“What did you do with it?” she asked that night, when we were again in bed.
“With what?” I said.
She closed her mouth. I never caught her under the bed again.
18
Mary
The crazy thing is that I woke up with a big smile on my face. I couldn’t help it. I’d slept so good in Leslie’s ginormous memory-foam bed, and there were wooden hangers for my five articles of clothing in the closet, and rose-scented tissues on the nightstand…and I was free. I didn’t have work in the morning. I didn’t have a boyfriend. I didn’t even have to answer to my own name.
Leslie’s voice filtered into my consciousness as I squirmed around in the bed, testing how it was possible that I could be comfortable in literally every position. She was on the landing, talking to someone. Dave’s voice, low. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Go on, go to work.” A kiss, then his shoes on the stairs. Her voice again: “Hi, Diego. Just calling to say I’m not feeling well today. I’m going to stay home for now.” A beat. “Yeah. I’m going to try to work on it this afternoon if the medicine kicks in…Okay. See you.”
I frowned. The front door had shut halfway through her conversation, and she’d still faked the whole thing, like Dave might be able to hear her through the wall.
In the other room, the baby began to cry. I rolled over, giving up on going back to sleep. Also, I hadn’t bothered to take a shower last night and I was sort of grossing myself out.
I got up and padded over to my duffel bag to get my cigarettes. I thought Leslie probably wouldn’t appreciate me smoking in the room, but I didn’t want to negate the air-conditioning by opening the window, so I went into the closet and hotboxed myself for a couple minutes until my body assured me it had been satisfactorily saturated in nicotine.
After that I went into the adjoining bathroom and sat down on the toilet. Leslie had mini cruelty-free toiletries lined up on the sink. There was a basket behind them, containing folded hand towels and what looked like inflated macaron cookies.
BOMB, the middle one read.
Oh. Perfect. I ran a bath (built-in, with its own set of wooden stairs leading up to the edge) and dropped the macaron into it. It fizzed happily, turning the water into a dense purple mirror flecked with blue and pink stars.
I climbed into the galaxy and stared down.
There was a faint banging. “Mary?”
Don’t you mean Robin? I thought. What if your husband hears from all the way at the firehouse?
“Mary?”
“Come in,” I called.
The bedroom door clicked open, then the door to the bathroom. “Oh!” Leslie backed into the doorframe, as if she had entered the bathroom expecting to see me filing my taxes.
“It’s okay.” I smiled. “Could you hand me the conditioner? Actually, don’t worry about it, I’ll get it.”
I stood up, dripping stars and glitter, and descended the little wooden stairs while Leslie covered her eyes and turned her back.
“Are you—decent?”
I sloshed back into the tub and slouched low enough to cover my chest with stars. “I love your bath products.”
Leslie stared at the glittery puddle on the hardwood floor, then made a visible effort to refocus. Was she angry? “I made an appointment with Albert. The trustee, I mean. He couldn’t get us in today, though.”
More time for me to spend in Leslie’s luxury bathtub. “That’s too bad,” I said.
“I thought you could come with me to my dad’s place. I’m packing up his stuff.” She waited, adding, when I didn’t respond, “You don’t have to do anything. You just have to hang out there for the day.”
“You don’t want me to be here alone,” I said, half questioning.
There was a silence. “Be downstairs in half an hour,” Leslie said.
“I’m not going to run away or anything,” I said, sliding lower in the water and squeezing my eyes shut. “Is that what you’re worried about?”
But I was talking to nobody. Past the open doorway, I could hear Leslie’s steps echoing on the stairs.
19
Leslie
“How come you don’t want to take him with us?” Mary asked through a bite of egg-and-cheese biscuit. She had insisted we stop at McDonald’s on the way.
I was unbuckling Eli from his car seat. “Ah. Ah. Ah!” he insisted. I stuck his pacifier in his mouth and hefted him onto my hip.
“I need to focus on getting my dad’s things put away,” I said.
“I could babysit him.” Mary took another bite. “He’s cute,” she said after swallowing, eyes following Eli’s attempt to grab my earring.
“Have you ever taken care of a baby before?” I slammed the car door and lifted the bag of baby items onto my other shoulder.
She leaned over into the driver’s seat, cooing at Eli from the rolled-down window. “Aunt Robin. Come on, baby. Say ‘Aunt Robin.’ ”