“It’s dry heat,” snapped Brandy. “That’s why days don’t feel as muggy and horrible as they do where you’re from.”
Where you’re from. Reggie couldn’t stand it. Already, the kids were depressed that there were no fireworks, and now they had to pretend to like the hippie tea that Brandy served them. Their complaints about the fireworks prompted a long and harsh speech from Brandy’s husband, who was a California firefighter. On top of all that, it turned out that little Justin was allergic to honeysuckle. When Reggie zipped his kids—three sons and one daughter—into sleeping bags on the floor of his sis-ter’s living room, they were uncharacteristically quiet, almost defeated, the way they behaved after receiving vaccinations.
“I like it better in Vacca Vale,” whispered his youngest child and only girl, Tina, eight years old, revealing her shambolic teeth in the dark, which would soon cost Reggie his overtime. Tina was not yet an alcoholic married to an incarcerated robber; she was a child who loved Atomic Fireball candies, jungle ecosystems, and doing “gymnastics” off the diving board. Her pillowcase, which she insisted on bringing, was printed with tigers. Campfire smoke in her hair. “I like our weather,” she whispered. “Back home.”
Now, decades later, on the balcony, Reggie fills his lungs with a Vacca Vale night, hoping that Tina is sober enough to enjoy it. He shines the flashlight of his phone on the balcony. The beam reveals two lawn chairs, a white plastic table, a broom, two empty cans of nonalcoholic beer, a bottle of expired sunblock, a coil of functionless wire, a baffling amount of bird poop—they’ve never seen a bird here—and a pot of dirt sprouting an American flag, everything drenched from the storm. Finally, he spots the mouse trap. He approaches it slowly, pacifying himself with the thought that normally mice in traps look intact.
He’s in luck: this one looks like it’s sleeping. But soon, this makes him feel worse. Even in its death, the mouse is a gentle guest, asking nothing of him.
The mouse’s fur is tan, not gray, which disturbs Reggie. It suggests some kind of individuality. He can see the veins of its ears. The ears make him think of Tina again, and his chest gets tight. In one quick motion, he forces himself to scoop the mouse with the plastic bag. Pulls the bag inside out, ties the top, and marches back into the apartment.
“I made a note,” says Ida.
Reggie crosses the room to his wife, because in fifty-six years of marriage, she has never crossed the room to him. She presses a yellow Post-it to the back of his hand: SO IN EVERYTHING DO UNTO OTHERS WHAT YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU FOR THIS SUMS UP THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS!!!—Matthew 7:12
“It’s in the bag?” she asks.
“What?”
“The body.”
“The mouse?”
“Yeah.”
“Yes.”
“Be sure to take it out of the bag.”
“Ida.”
“Just dump it on their mat. And stick the note to their door.”
Reggie stands for a moment, watching the television to escape the life in front of him. Local news. One man nearly murdered another at a bar called Burnt Toast last week, and now the bar is closing. Over the last year, officers were summoned to Burnt Toast three times a week, on average. Cut to an interview with the co-owner: “Yeah, we’ve been here a minute and we’re sad to see it go—decades of our life, you know, we’ve gone through three Dobermans since we opened. But too much beep has gone down in this beep hole,” she says. “It’s bittersweet.” No weapons were found on the dead man.
In other news, some are calling the Vacca Vale Country Club incident of Monday night an act of terrorism. Cut to an interview with a middle-aged woman. The banner reads: MARY KOZLOWSKI, WIFE OF MAN AT CELEBRATORY DINNER.
“It drives me nuts when people are too politically correct to call a spade a spade,” Mary Kozlowski says. “Terrorism means you use violence to get what you want. Or, you know, threaten to use violence. And that’s what happened here. You better believe it. Frankly, I’m disappointed by the state of things. The police aren’t treating this thing like they should. They said they don’t think anybody’s in real danger, but they have no reason to believe that. It’s a serious thing—the voodoo dolls—and they need to take it seriously. God forbid anything happens to my husband or his colleagues, but if it does, the Vacca Vale police ought to know the blood will be on their hands.”
Officials declined to comment on the investigation, which is ongoing.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” asks Ida. “Go.”
Reggie turns and shuffles to the door. A memory descends on him like a bird, and he welcomes it. He was fifteen years old. It was the day he met Ida, a spitfire farm girl, one year older. He had moved to Vacca Vale from Gary, Indiana, one week before. Ida’s mother sought his after Mass one Sunday, took her hand, and welcomed her to town. The dads bashfully attempted conversation near the doughnuts and coffee, which left Reggie to stare at Ida, terrified. Puberty was a time of mysterious anguish and constant humiliation. Why am I visible? he wondered every day. But Ida liked being visible, and that was obvious as soon as he saw her. She returned his gaze as though consenting to a duel, her neck long, her chin tilted upward, her skin tight and shiny with a summer tan. She was a few inches taller than he was. “The coffee here is awful,” she said. Sweat attacked him sharply, like an army of toothpicks. “Is that so?” he asked, his voice cracking. “Yeah,” she said, “but the doughnuts are like manna.” She adjusted her tights through a sky blue dress and approached the table of food. “Want one?” Reggie cleared his throat. She wasn’t exactly pretty—her features angular and tough—but she was the most automatically commanding person Reggie had ever met. “Sure,” he said. “Just a glazed one.” She scoffed, looked at him like he asked her to feed him bottled formula. “No,” she said. “You’ll have an apple fritter.”
On their first date, she stole a golf cart from her neighbors and drove them five miles to the industrial farmland on the outskirts of their city, cackling gorgeously, flinging jokes into the night. He had never seen a woman drive anything before. She was free, and strong, and she smelled like the earth. “My father says the devil sneezed on me at birth,” she told Reggie as she drove at full speed—fifteen miles an hour—down an empty backroad, into a cornfield. “He says that’s why I’m so bad.” Dust kicked up around them. Abruptly, she parked under a sky of stars, enclosing them both in sublime and unnatural geometry. There were no fireflies here. No cicadas or mosquitos. No room for any life but the corn. It was midsummer and the stalks were six feet high, endless, green—a freaky performance of health. Ida plucked a cob from its stem, shucked it violently, and tied the leafy casing around Reggie’s starstruck eyes. “Don’t look,” she said. “I’m going to kiss you, but you’ll never be able to prove it.”
Sixty-two years later, Reggie squints at Ida’s white hair, flooded with affection, pity, fear. The blend, he supposes, amounts to love. He wishes he could prove it.
“Where did you go, my darling?” he asks in a volume he knows his wife can’t hear. She watches the television, her head motionless before it.
He heaves himself out of the apartment and into the stairwell but stops as he hears a clatter of noise from below. He listens for a moment but can’t make sense of it. Instead of ascending one flight, he descends a flight, following the noise. On the third floor, he tracks the sounds—clatters, yelling—tracing them to C4. He presses his ear to the door, clutching the plastic bag.
The activity within the apartment sends sound waves to the microphone in Reggie’s hearing aid, which converts the waves into electrical signals before sending them to an amplifier, which in turn sends them to a speaker, which sends them back to his ear at a newly adjusted volume. The assembly line of a sound factory.