Taking a gamble, Rachel asks, “What do you want Mommy to bring you when she comes home?” A bribe will help everyone save face. “A Mickey Mouse?” she offers. “Or a Donald Duck?”
She hears a faint gasp. The breathing stops for an instant before the distant, high-pitched voice squeals, “Oh, Daddy.” Delighted, it says, “Pull my hair, Daddy! Fuck me up the ass!”
It’s not April. It’s the guests next door, a voice filtering through the wall.
“How about we use a solid-gold, thousand-pound bar of chocolate-covered Rocky Road ice cream?” Rachel deadpans. Pressing the receiver against her chest, she pounds a fist against the wall and yells, “How about a pretty pony fucks you?”
Over the phone she hears the little robot vacuum humming around—a replacement—cleaning the floor and bumping into walls, like (what else?) a sightless animal. Ted sits on his ass half the day, but he still wants his labor-saving Sharper Image gadgets. It scares Rachel, the idea that April might accidentally stumble over the vacuum, but Ted insists she’s smarter than a cheap machine.
In a flash, Rachel knows. Even if she’s a little tipsy, it all makes sense. Ted blames her for what happened to Belinda Carlisle. He’s not brilliant, but he’s not stupid. Holding a grudge is something April inherited from her father. He’s bided his time, and now he’s getting his revenge.
A thin crack opens up in her voice, and now all of her panic rushes to escape. She asks, “April, baby, is your daddy hurting you?” She tries to not ask, to stop asking, but the effort is like trying to un-pop a balloon.
* * *
By the time April had been born, they were settled in a cookie-cutter ranch house a few blocks away. Ted had wanted to bury the cat in the new backyard, but the fire marshal never surrendered the remains. The ranch house was less dramatic. It had no open fireplace and no bidet, but with a blind child, that was just as well. How could Rachel not be affected, living pregnant for six months with smoldering cat turds? As the obstetrician put it, the toxo parasite attacks the optic nerve, but Rachel knew there was more to it than that. It was retribution. Of course, Rachel swore she hadn’t seen Belinda Carlisle before she’d flipped the switch. And Ted had accepted Rachel’s statement at face value.
There were lies that married two people more effectively than any wedding vows.
* * *
On Sunday, Rachel phones and insists that Ted listen. “The next call I make is to the police,” she swears. Unless April says something to change her mind, she’s going to call Child Protective Services and request an intervention.
Her husband, Mr. Passive-Aggressive, laughs a confused laugh. “What do you want me to do, pinch her?”
Pinch her, yes, Rachel says. Spank her. Pull her hair. Anything.
He asks, “Just to clarify … if I don’t smack my kid, you’ll report me for child abuse?”
Nodding, Rachel tells the phone, “Yes.” She pictures him drinking coffee out of the black-glazed mug he salvaged from the fire’s wreckage. The color and finish are so ugly, the mug looks as good as new.
“How about I burn her with a cigarette?” he asks, his voice warped with sarcasm. “Would that make you happy?”
“Use a needle from my sewing box,” Rachel instructs. “But sterilize it with some rubbing alcohol first. She’s never had a tetanus shot.”
Ted says, “I can’t believe that you’re serious.”
“This has gone on long enough,” she says. She knows she sounds crazy. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe this was the toxoplasmosis, an infection in her brain talking, but she knows she’s serious.
* * *
When their insurance settlement for the fire had failed to come through in a speedy fashion, by then the fire marshal was calling it arson. Their lab tests had found a residue in the cat’s fur. Some incendiary chemical agent had kept Belinda Carlisle aflame during her panicked, agonizing final flight. It looked fishier yet that a few weeks before the fire Rachel had doubled their homeowners coverage. Even with a baby clamped to one breast, she hadn’t hesitated to lawyer up.
* * *
On the phone Sunday night, Rachel says she’s not bluffing. Either Ted makes their daughter emit some words, some sound, or they’ll have this battle in family court. It seems like a long time, but Ted responds.
His voice pointed elsewhere, he says, “April, honey. Do you remember what a flu shot is?” He says, “Do you remember when you had to get a shot so you could go play at Easter camp?” Silence answers. Rachel shuts her eyes in order to hear more. All she can detect is the hum of the fluorescent bulb in the bedside lamp. She stands up from the bed to shut off the air conditioner, but before she takes a step, Ted’s voice is back.
“Can you get Daddy the sewing basket?” Nothing seems to happen, but now his voice comes full into Rachel’s ear. “Are you happy? Does this make you happy?” His footsteps sound in the hallway. “I’m going to the bathroom.” His delivery is singsong, like a lullaby. “I’m getting the rubbing alcohol to torture our daughter.” He sings, “Rach, you can stop this at any time.”
But Rachel knows this isn’t true. Nobody can stop anything. The people will always be humping next door. The burning cat will always be rocketing like a comet around every house in which they ever live. Nothing will ever be resolved. Again, it crosses her mind that Ted might be tormenting her. April is upstairs in her room or playing in the backyard, and he’s only pretending she’s there. That’s easier to swallow than the idea that her own child despises her.
“You don’t understand,” Rachel tells the phone. “I need you to hurt her to prove she’s alive.” She demands, “Hurt her as proof of how much you don’t hate me.”
Before the TV can sell another thousand diamond wristwatches, April screams.
Not a beat later, Ted asks, “Rach?” Breathless. The scream echoing in her head. It would echo in her head forever. A caterwauling. The shriek of Belinda Carlisle. It’s the same squeal April had made when she was born.
“You did it,” she says.
Ted replies, “You screamed.”
It wasn’t Rachel’s scream or April’s. It was still another sex noise from the next room. It’s another stalemate. The bag will always be half full. Ted will always be cheating.
Rachel asks him to put April on the phone. “Make sure she’s got the phone to her ear,” Rachel says, “and then I want you to leave the room.”
* * *
“Your father doesn’t understand.” Into the phone, Rachel says, “He owed more on that house than it was worth. Someone had to make the ugly choices.”
She explains to her daughter how the only problem with marrying a spineless, lazy, stupid man is that you could be stuck with him for the rest of your life. “I had to do something,” Rachel says. “I didn’t want you born dead and blind.”
It doesn’t matter who’s listening, Ted or April. It’s another mess that Rachel needs to clean up. She describes how she’d combed hairspray into the cat’s fur, simple cheap hairspray, every day for weeks. She knew it was using the fireplace as a toilet, and she hoped the pilot light would be enough. Rachel overfed the cat so it would need to defecate more often. She crossed her fingers that an increase in intestinal gas might do the trick. She was no sadist. On the contrary, she didn’t want Belinda Carlisle to suffer. Rachel had made certain the smoke detectors had fresh batteries, and she’d waited.
“Your father,” she begins. “He thinks that if the dishes and the toilet are black to begin with, they never get dirty.”
Their last night in Ted’s house, Rachel had stepped into the living room. She’d rushed inside from the cold. She’d intentionally turned down the thermostat, hoping to make the pilot light more attractive. To set her trap, she’d buried tuna fish in the crushed gravel. That night, she’d walked into the dark room, into the shadow cast by the Christmas tree, and seen two yellow eyes blinking at her from the fireplace. A little drunk, she’d said, “I’m sorry.”