Eventually she saw the chauvinism of her attempt. Why should he learn to speak like a rodent? Why not the other way around? Hence she made it her business to try and master snake. After weeks of getting nowhere she split her tongue with a razor. This didn’t make it any easier to communicate, but it did give them something else in common.
The two were in front of the fireplace one afternoon, softly hissing at each other, when someone knocked on the door. It was a toad, and after a great sigh at the inconvenience, the mouse stepped onto the front stoop to greet her. Even without the mimeographed flyers under her arm, anyone could have guessed why she was here: it was that “long-suffering mother” look so common to amphibians, who had children by the thousands and then fell apart when a handful were sacrificed to a higher cause.
“I’m sorry to barge in on you this way,” the toad said, “but a few of my babies has taken off and I’m just about at my wit’s end.” She blew her nose into her open palm, then wiped the snotty hand against her thigh. “They’s girls as well as boys. Nine in all, and wasn’t a one of them old enough to fend for themselves.”
It was this last part that tested the mouse’s patience—fend for themselves—as if a toad needed any particular training. They hatched, they opened their eyes, and then they hopped around, each one as graceless and unappealing as a stone.
“Well,” the mouse said, “if you were that concerned for the safety of your children, you probably should have kept an eye on them.”
“But I did,” wept the toad. “They was just outside, playing in the yard, like youngsters do.”
Playing indeed, thought the mouse, and she recalled the patch of sandy soil, bare but for a single, withered dandelion. The area bordered a thicket of tall ferns, and that was where she had hidden herself and lured the listless, gullible children with the promise of cluster flies. If they hadn’t been starving, and possibly brain damaged due to their upbringing, they wouldn’t have so blindly followed her. So really, wasn’t this the toad’s fault? Where was her pity when flies came to the door, asking about their missing babies? Was an insect’s mother love any less worthy than an amphibian’s? And wasn’t the snake a baby as well, as cute and innocent and deserving of protection as any other living creature?
It pained the mouse to realize that, while he’d always be adorable, her companion was not the little one he had been. In the months since she’d rescued him, he’d grown almost five inches, and there seemed to be no stopping him. Underage toads would not suffice for much longer, and so the mouse accepted a leaflet and studied it for a moment. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “How’s about I keep my eyes open, and you check back with me in, oh, say, about two weeks or so. How does that sound?”
A few days later there came another knock, this time from a mole. “I’m wondering,” she asked, “if you’ve by any chance seen my daughter?”
“Well, I don’t know,” the mouse said. “What did she look like?”
The mole shrugged. “Don’t know exactly. I guess most likely she looked like me but smaller.”
“It’s a shame when things you love go missing,” the mouse said. “Take these grubs, for instance. I had a whole colony living in my backyard, darlings, every one. And just so smart you couldn’t keep up with them. One minute they were there, and the next thing I knew they’d taken off—no note or anything.”
Her visitor looked at the ground for a moment, and the mouse thought, Exactly. If awards were given to the world’s biggest hypocrites, you’d be hard-pressed to choose between the moles and the toads.
“To answer your question, I did meet a little mole,” the mouse said. “A girl it was, said she’d run away from home and asked if she could come live with me for a while. I told her, ‘Well, maybe you should think it over and not be so rash.’ I said, ‘Why don’t you see how you feel in a month, and then come back?’ ”
“A month!” wailed the mole.
“That’s what I told her, so why don’t you do the same? If your daughter is here, I’ll keep her for you, and if not, at least you tried.”
Off went the mole, buoyed with hope, and the mouse stepped back into her house. “Idiot,” she whispered. The snake lifted its flat head off the carpet, and she explained that from now on, his meals would deliver themselves. “That’s all the more time we can spend together,” she said. “Would you like that, baby? I know you would.”
Out slid the snake’s forked tongue, and she thought again that she had never seen such a beautiful creature. Smart too. Beautiful and smart, and above all loyal.
A month later the mole was back. She stood at the door, knocking politely, and just as she began pounding, the toad hopped by. “If you’re looking for that mouse, I think you can probably forget it,” she called.
The mole whirled around and squinted.
“I came by two weeks ago and did just what you’re doing. Knocked on that door till I just about busted it, but didn’t nobody answer. Then I talked to some squirrels yonder, and they said there hadn’t been smoke out the chimney since the beginning of the month. Strange, they said, because that mouse always had a fire going, even in summer. Their guess and mine too is that she took off, maybe found a mate or something. You know how mice are—anything for a little affection.”
The mole, distressed, spilled out the story of her missing child. The toad did the same. But had they not wept and commiserated, had they instead put their ears to the door, they might have heard the snake, his belly full of unconditional love, banging to be let out.
The Parenting Storks
The precocious stork was only two weeks old when he asked where babies come from.
“Goodness,” said his mother. “I mean, golly, that’s quite some question.” She considered herself to be as modern as anyone, but didn’t you have to draw the line somewhere? “Let me get back to you on that,” she said, and she shoved a herring down his throat with a bit more force than usual.
Later that day the mother stork repeated the conversation to her sister, who also had a recently born chick. She meant it as a Don’t kids say the darnedest things type of story and was unprepared for the reaction she got.
“Your only son came to you for answers, and you didn’t give them to him?”
“Well, of course I didn’t,” the stork said. “Why, he’s just a baby himself. How can he be expected to understand something so complicated?”
“So children should be put off or, even worse, lied to?”
“Until they’re old enough, sure.”
“So we lie and we lie and then one day they’re just supposed to believe us?”
“That’s how it was with our family, and I never felt particularly traumatized,” the stork said. “Besides, they’re not lies so much as stories. There’s a difference.”
“Oh, is there?” spat her sister, surprised at how angry this was making her. “Give me an example.”
The stork squinted over the surrounding rooftops until something came to her. “All right. I remember seeing my first full moon and being told by Granddad that it was a distant natural satellite formed billions of years ago. And I believed it for the longest time until I learned the truth.”
“The truth?” her sister said.
“God made it,” announced the stork.
Her sister felt suddenly ill. “Who?”
“God,” the stork repeated. “He made the world and the heavens, all of it out of dust and willpower, and in less than a week! I overheard a cardinal talking about him on top of the cathedral in the square, and it was really quite instructive.”
“So is that who brings the babies? God?”
“Lord no,” the stork said. “Babies are brought by mice.”
It took a moment before her sister could speak. “Oh, sweetie,” she said, “our babies are huge, so how on earth—”
“These are special mice,” the stork explained. “Capable of lifting things much heavier than themselves. They hide until you lay your eggs, see, and then, when your back is t
urned, they slip the chicks inside.”
“But we build our nests on chimney tops,” the sister said. “How could a little mouse—a mouse carrying a live, vivacious newborn—climb that high? And how would he hold the chick while he did it?”
“Ever hear of magic pockets?” the stork asked.
“Magic mice pockets, sure,” her sister said, and she wondered how anyone so gullible could manage to feed herself, much less build a nest and raise a child. “And where exactly did you get this information?”
“Oh,” said the stork, “just this guy I’ve been having sex with.”
Now it was the sister’s turn to stare over the rooftops. “I know,” she said. “Why not tell your son that’s where babies come from—sex. It’s crazy, I know, but maybe it will tide him over until he’s old enough to grasp that whole magic-mouse concept.”
“You think so?”
“I do,” her sister said.
The stork flew off, and her sister, shaken, watched her go. They’d both had the same parents and had both left the nest at roughly the same time. They lived in the same town and drank the same water, so how was it that she herself had turned out to be so smart, while her poor sister was so confused?
With the conversation still fresh in her mind, she returned to her own child, a female born ten days earlier. The chick opened her beak for food, and the stork sighed. “I know you’re hungry, but Mother’s had an exhausting afternoon and needs to recharge her batteries before she puts on her slave hat.” She picked a few feathers out of the nest and flicked them over the edge. “Do you want to know why Mommy’s exhausted?”
The child opened her beak even wider, and the stork let out a moan. “It really wouldn’t hurt you to take an interest in others,” she said. “I tell you I’m depressed, I tell you I feel cornered and lonely, and your response is ‘Fine. Now feed me,’ which is actually very insensitive of you. All mothers feel unconditional love for their children, but there’s a timer on it, all right. It doesn’t last forever, especially when you’re selfish.”
The child closed her beak.
“Mommy’s depressed because your cousin wanted to know where babies come from. Now, this is all perfectly natural for someone your age—nothing at all to be ashamed of. Sex is a beautiful and important part of life, I explained that to you last week, when we discussed your father’s infidelity. Remember we talked about Daddy’s cheating? I told you that there were good lovers and bad ones and that your father is pathologically in-attentive to the needs of his partners. I said that you were not conceived of mutual orgasm and that it probably affected your ability to empathize, remember?”
A crow flew by, and, keeping her head perfectly still, the child followed it with her eyes.
“It’s caring too deeply that has gotten me depressed, not about you so much as your aunt, who told me with great authority that babies are brought by mice.”
The child’s eyes widened.
“That was my reaction as well,” said the stork. She looked at her daughter and, for the first time in days, felt a splinter of hope. Then, deciding she was hungry, she flew off in search of food.
The chick watched her go and wished once again that she had a brother or sister, someone, anyone, besides her mother, who never for one moment stopped talking about herself. She’d thought since birth that she was fated to be an only child, but maybe the mice could change that. The question was: How did they work? Did they visit every nest in turn? Was it possible that they took requests and would come when charmed or summoned? The chick leaned over the edge of the nest, hoping to see one of these mice and call out to it. Then she leaned out a little farther.
The Faithful Setter
Back before I met her, my wife lived on a farm. It was a small operation, organic vegetables, pick-your-own strawberries, and a dozen or so chickens, each and every one of them, to hear her tell it, “an absolute raging asshole.” The first time she said this I laughed, as I’d always thought that word was reserved for males. The same goes for “dick,” which she uses for females all the time—this raccoon, for example, that sometimes gets into our garbage cans. “Can you believe the nerve of that dick?” she’ll say to me, her nose pressed flat against the dining room window. Then she’ll bark, “Hey, asshole, go trash somebody else’s fucking yard.”
I attribute my wife’s language to the fact that she’s one-quarter spaniel. She says she’s only an eighth, but, come on, the ears say it all. That and her mouth.
Still, though, I can’t help but love her—forgave her even after she cheated. “They are too your children,” she’d said, referring to her last litter, a party of four that looked no more like me than that dick of a raccoon. I knew they were fathered by the English bull terrier across the street, but what are you going to do? Everyone’s entitled to one mistake, aren’t they?
I’d like to tell you that I hated this terrier right from the start, that I’d never, for one moment, trusted him. But what would that say about my wife and me, that our tastes are that dissimilar? If you want to know the truth about it, I actually hadn’t given the guy much thought. His ugliness I’d noticed, sure—those creepy little eyes. His stupidity was evident as well, but I can’t say I’d fashioned a formal “opinion.” At least not until this puppy business.
The litter was born, and not one week later the bull terrier bit a kid in the face, practically tore it right off, as a matter of fact. It was the little blond girl who lived in the house next door to him. I was in the backseat of the car, just pulling into the driveway, when the ambulance arrived, and, man, was that ever a scene. The parents were beside themselves.
“Oh well,” my wife yawned when I told her about it later that afternoon. “It’s not like they can’t have more children.”
I said, “Come again?”
She said, “That’s the way they feel about us, so why should we be any different?”
“So we need to stoop to their level?” I said. As for the bull terrier, my wife admitted that he was a hothead. She said he had a lousy sense of humor, but she never quite denounced him the way I needed her to. After he was trundled away and put down, she spent the day sulking. “A headache,” she said to the kids. “Mommy has a sick headache.” She claimed to have one the following day as well. On and on for a week, and all the while she had her eye on the house across the street, the place where her boyfriend had lived.
It wasn’t long afterward that the little girl came home from the hospital, her head cocooned in bandages. There were holes for her to look through, and others for her nose and mouth, all of them gunked up with their corresponding fluids: tears, snot, drool. Even if you hated children, you had to feel sorry for her. At least I thought you had to. My wife, though, I could see that she blamed this girl, thinking that were it not for her, the bull terrier would still be alive.
I figured she’d get over him eventually, and in the meantime I’d just settle back and be patient. It helped when our owner put an ad in the paper and got rid of those godforsaken puppies. Oh sure, I cried, but it was more for my wife than for myself. I don’t care what you hear about stepparenting, it’s just not the same when they’re somebody else’s kids. Don’t get me wrong—I wish them the best. I just don’t feel the need to see them again.
Now that it was just the two of us, I hoped that things would return to normal. It was then that our owner took my wife in for a hysterectomy. She was out cold for the operation, saw nothing, felt nothing, went to sleep fertile and woke up a shell, her uterus and whatever else was in there, gone.
I told her that as far as I was concerned, it didn’t matter in the least. To this she growled, “Oh, I’m sure it doesn’t. I’m sure you’re just fine with it.”
I said, “What are you talking about?”
“You’re thinking that this will keep me from cheating on you again. Or that if I do at least nothing will come of it.”
It was like she was blaming me for the hysterectomy. I said, “Baby, don’t do this.”
; She didn’t talk to me for three days after that. What was going through her mind is anyone’s guess. Me, though, I kept thinking about this Weimaraner I met once at the dog run. He had one of those owners who’d get on all fours and try to communicate with him, not just barking but lying on his back, acting submissive and so forth. There are quite a few people like that at the dog run—nuts is what they are—but this guy really took the cake. One morning last fall he went to the hospital and had his tonsils taken out. They weren’t raw or swollen or anything, he just wanted them. “In a jar,” he supposedly told the doctor. “And don’t trim off the fat.”
At the end of the day, he returned home, cut the tonsils into pieces with a steak knife, and hand-fed them to this Weimaraner, like, “Here, boy, I love you so much, I want you to have a part of me.”
“And?” I said.
“It was a lot like chicken,” the Weimaraner told me. So that’s what I wondered during the time my wife and I weren’t talking. What did her hysterectomy taste like? It was crazy, I know, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Did my thoughts bespeak an urge toward cannibalism? Or did the flesh in question—the fact that it was her uterus—reduce this to a normal sexual fantasy? I would’ve liked to have discussed it, but the way things stood, I thought it best to keep my mouth shut.
It was right about then, my wife wanting her boyfriend back and me entertaining these insane, dark thoughts, that the bandaged girl reappeared. It seemed there were some complications, an infection or something, and she had to go back to the hospital. We saw her through the living room window, just briefly, getting into the car with her parents. “Little Miss Priss,” my wife muttered—the first words out of her mouth in what felt like forever. Then she limped into the den and lay down in front of the TV. This is her way of being alone, as I hate the television. The programs are beside the point. It’s the machine itself I can’t bear. It stinks to high heaven, so I always stop at the doorway and park myself just this side of the carpet.