Salt

"Salt"

By Christine Stoddard

Joanne sank into her green-gray armchair and pulled the daily crossword puzzle into her lap. Surprisingly she hadn't tripped on a plastic tow-truck or a Lego leg on the way there. Joanne had just returned from another eight-hour day of talking to bank customers she secretly hated in the typical 9-to-5 worker's way. She began by removing her wool blazer and kicking off the shoes that perpetually pinched her pinkie toes as soon as she opened the door to the sound of Sesame Street blaring throughout the house. It was time to change the channel and relax, maybe catch some "Judge Judy" so she could make fun of stupid people to up the ol' self-esteem. Groping for the remote and reading clues about "church recesses" and "parakeet perhaps" at the same time, hunger suddenly hit her. She thought she had nabbed enough cheese cubes and carrot sticks at the weekly company meeting, but apparently not. Joanne set the paper down and begrudgingly pushed herself up from her chair. Then she walked barefoot to the kitchen.

The kitchen tile was colder against her feet than Joanne had hoped. In fact, it was Arctic cold. She gritted her teeth and tip-toed over to the cabinets at the far end of the room, desperately trying to make as little contact with the freezing floor as possible. Finally, she arrived to her destination. But instead of lunging for a box of sinful snacks, Joanne stopped. She did not stop out of guilt that she was violating everything Jenny Craig had ever taught her, nor did she stop because she suspected her husband was spying on her so he could chastise her later. Joanne had told Jenny Craig and her husband to go to H-E-double hockey sticks about her eating habits long ago. No, Joanne stopped, poised on her tiptoes, because she noticed several orange Cheese-It crumbs on her otherwise spotless kitchen counter. The sight so astonished the neat freak that she jumped with fright, which brought her feet completely down to the floor.

"Ooh!" she cried. Joanne hopped onto her tip-toes again and immediately opened the kitchen cabinet doors. Bank worker became P.I. as she held her breath for fear of sniffing up a stray whisker. Joanne began inspecting for other evidence of mice by lifting this and that, but grew increasingly confused--brow furrowed, lips twisted downward--when her search yield nothing, not even the tiniest nugget of dark poo.

"I guess I'm dealing with constipated mice," she muttered to herself and smiled awkwardly. Joanne shrugged her shoulders and, having lost her appetite, hobbled back to her armchair where her red pen and personal copy of The Washington Post waited for her. As soon as she looked down at the paper, Joanne frowned for having to divine a seven-letter word for 'devouring all the cupcakes at a birthday party.' Suddenly she felt like taking a nap instead, but Joanne was afraid of a mouse crawling over her and scraping out her eyes during her sleep.

"Like Hitchcock's The Birds--but with mice," she murmured and shuddered. Her pen fell; she picked it up then picked up a dictionary to look up how to spell "Loquacious." Her left eye twitched as she flipped the pages toward her destination.

The rest of the evening continued in peace, despite Joanne's burgeoning paranoia. Joanne's husband came home, having picked up their six-year old son from his play group. He placed a lukewarm pepperoni pizza on the table and, still holding Thomas in his arms, and gave Joanne a dry kiss. Thomas blew a spit bubble that popped and splattered on his face. Neither parent noticed. Joanne had abandoned her puzzle and stared straight ahead at the wall, wondering how many dirty rodents lurked there. Fred distracted Joanne by asking how her way went and then described his, in the customary way of remotely engaged married men. He licked his lip right after posing the question. Joanne explained how she had filled out about six billion deposit slips and handed cheap lollipops to noisy children who otherwise wouldn't shut up. Fred had to wait on two customers who, within minutes of ordering a four-layer chocolate cake to celebrate their 20th anniversary, started arguing about getting a divorce when he came to re-fill their beer mugs.

Gradually, Fred realized how nervous Joanne was growing with every second. She kept looking around her with the fervency of a crack addict, rubbing her hands back and forth on her pants, and playing with her hand. Joanne never touched her hair unless she had to wash it. She considered fingering ringlets and smoothing back bangs some of the most unsanitary things around. Fred started massaging her feet and asked what the problem was. He avoided touching her red pinkies for fear that she would squawk. When Joanne asked Fred if he had seen any mice around, he said no. His wife sighed, "Good." Then Fred told Joanne more stories from the restaurant. Eventually the evening faded and Fred, Joanne, and Thomas went to sleep.

There isn't much to summarize; the color of the walls, or the type of dishes they owned could not shed further insight on the evolving predicament. Linking a tablecloth brand to their circumstance would be too easy, too "correlation indicates causation."

The next several weeks followed a similar pattern with one major change. Joanne came home from work at the bank's cranky and ready to rest--this was nothing unusual. But now, instead of retiring to her faithful armchair, Joanne set out to destroy the enemy. After discovering the open boxes that one fateful afternoon, Joanne purchased about fifty mousetraps. The very next day, she then positioned them throughout the house as soon as her husband and child came home.

Joanne concentrated mostly on the kitchen. There she formed a circle of traps in the middle of the tile floor and nestled a bit of feta cheese into each wooden contraption. She stepped back, placing her hands on her hips, to admire her store-bought brilliance.

"Good," Joanne muttered, "By this time tomorrow, I should have a ring of rodents." She wasn't even sure what that meant, how having a ring of them would be better than a line of them, but she clapped her hands and shuffled back to her chair to guess at a synonym for 'lint,' anyway. The clumps of dust, like mice, issued a sharp shiver through her nervous body. She sneezed just thinking about it.

Joanne sank into her armchair and twirled around her pen lazily as she pondered clue after clue. As she read, guessed, read, and guessed some more, the sounds of Fred and Thomas playing "Park Ranger," a game of Thomas' imagination, buzzed in the background. Thomas always bawled when Fred pretended to be a poacher. Yet no matter how many times Joanne told him to remove that part from the game, Fred built it in, with the excuse that, "He might as well learn about the real world now."

"Hey, quiet, boys!" Joanne yelped. She hadn't meant to whine, but she was so invested in her puzzle that the most minor sounds irritated her. Fred growled like a grizzly bear in response. "C'mon! I'm reading through my clues!" Finally one hit her--the capital of Kansas--and she rushed to write it in the blank boxes.

She whispered, "T-O-P-E-K-A," and grinned at her miniscule accomplishment. Seventy more clues remained unanswered.

Suddenly a chorus of twenty consecutive clatters caught Joanne's attention. She tossed down her pen and ran to the kitchen, one slipper one and one slipper off, chipped nails visible to the mysterious mice.

Joanne expected blood. Joanne expected guts. She anticipated all the grime and none of the poetry of death. But when she entered the kitchen, Joanne observed nothing more than the same ring of traps she had set up an hour earlier, minus the feta.

"Genius mice, apparently," she sighed. "Fred!" When her husband didn't answer, Joanne trudged to her son's room with the sorrow of defeat.

As she stood in the doorway, Fred smiled at her and asked, "What's the matter, sweetie?"

"I--where's Thomas?"

"Oh, the poacher got him." When his wife glared at him, Fred blurted the more apt, "He went to the bathroom."

"Ah. Anyway, I just checked up on those mousetraps and all the cheese is gone. Those mice managed to steal it all."

"You didn't even catch a tail?"

"Nope. That's expensive cheese, too."

"What kind did you use?"

"Feta."

"You put feta cheese in mousetraps, Joanne? I didn't know we were millionaires." He rolled his amber eyes.

"Well, I'll check the other ones tonight. Don't worry about it, babe. We'll catch some. If not, we need a pet around here, anyway."

"Oh, Fred. I don't want a cat. It'll--"

Fred widened his eyes and meowed.

"Stop being cute," Joanne said and stuck out her tongue, as if she and her husband were two ten-year olds too embarrassed to admit they had crushes on each other.

"I can't help it."

Joanne shot him a fake disapproving look. A moment of silence passed before she wondered aloud, "What's taking Thomas so long?"

"He's probably still crying about the poacher, using up all the Kleenex your mother brought over."

"You didn't! I told you to stop talking about--"

"No, not this time. He cried too much last time. Don't give me that incredulous look. I promise."

"I hope so. I better go check on him. As far as I know, he's swishing paper around the toilet bowl again. If I ever see another plumber's bill like that again..."

Joanne meandered toward the bathroom, knocked on the door, waited for a reply, and opened to the sight of her son with his blue jeans down and his skinny legs dangling. As usual, though, his red hair outshone everything else about him.

"Hi, Thomas."

Her son burped in response.

"Well, excuse you. C'mon. Are you almost done? Daddy wants to read you that new book on elk in Yellowstone National Park."

"Yes, Mommy," Thomas mumbled. He hopped off of the toilet and onto his tiny stool to wash his hands. Then he waddled back to his room, where his father had already begun thumbing through the latest nature book.

Joanne kept buying mousetraps and kept failing. Joanne eventually realized that the mice wouldn't fall for her traps, so, despite her promise that she would never own a pet, she adopted a calico cat.

The cat hissed and cowered away from Thomas the moment Joanne placed the animal in the backyard. Thomas continued chewing a frosty clump of grass, as if nothing had happened. When Joanne ran into the house to pull a peach pie out of the oven, the cat squeezed under the yard's chain link fence as quickly as a fish in water and was never seen again.

"Of all the luck!" Joanne griped as she stood in the yard, holding a peach pie in her oven-mitt clad hands. No matter how many times she called the cat, it did not respond. It had slipped off into a world of countless birds and no pesky owners.

"Come inside, Thomas."

Thomas wouldn't budge.

"Don't do this to Mommy, Thomas. You see I'm losing this battle with the mice, don't you?" Joanne stormed into the house and told her husband to grab Thomas.

"Come on," Fred said, "It's time for your bath, buddy." He scooped up the boy and went inside, where the house was significantly warmer. Fred climbed the stairs to the second floor bathroom and sat Thomas on the toilet seat. The little boy kicked his feet back and forth restlessly. "Do you want to play with Ducky or the boat?"

"Ducky."

Fred squeaked the rubber duck in Thomas' face. The boy laughed and took the duck to hug in his pudgy arms. Fred turned around, turned on the water, and let it run as he peered out the window. Snow had begun to carpet the yard. Fred pointed it out to his son, who began to sing, "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer had a very shiny nose!"

"A bit off-key there, Thomas. Let me show you how it's done." Fred seized the rubber ducky from Thomas' hands and belted out his even more off-key rendition of the song. Thomas giggled and scrunched his upturned nose.

"Okay, Thomas," Fred said, after dunking his finger in the bathtub, "Let's start taking all those winter layers off, huh? Imagine, pretty soon you'll be taking showers and you'll have to take your clothes off all by yourself." The father unzipped the boy's coat, pulled his sweater up over his head, took off his T-shirt, and jolted back. "What are these?"

White spots, like thick strokes of paint on a pale pink canvas, covered Thomas from his shoulders to his waist. The spots were about an inch in diameter and not especially round or concentrated, but they were definitely noticeable. "Joanne!"

"What?" She called from the kitchen.

"Get in here."

"God, Fred, I thought we agreed you'd give him a bath tonight!"

"No, come look!"

"If this is a joke," she said, her voice growing louder with the sound of her approaching footsteps, "I'm going to be pretty upset. I just put another pie in the oven."

"No, it's not a--" Fred didn't even finish his sentence. His wife rounded the corner and froze in the doorway.

"Christ, what is that?"

"Some kind of rash?"

"Yeah, but from what? I've never..."

Thomas turned his head from Fred to Joanne and from Joanne to Fred.

"I'll call the doctor in the morning," Joanne muttered. "Maybe it's some kind of allergic reaction. Put some Vaseline on it after you dry him. I don't know what else to do." She pulled Thomas into her chest and whispered a word or two into his velvety ear.

The next morning, Joanne called the doctor's office and had to endure Muzak, the exact same tune they played at least twice daily at the bank where she worked, when they put her on hold.

"Hello?" The secretary's voice was deep and tinged with annoyance.

"Finally," Joanne murmured half to herself. "Hello."

"How may I help you?"

"I'd like to make an appointment for my son. He seems--"

"The doctor's all full for the day."

"Could he come in tom--"

"Is this an emergency?"

"Well, no. Er, maybe. I'm not--"

"If it's not urgent, you'll have to wait until January 8 when his office re-opens from the holiday season."

"That's a month from now!"

"I'm sorry, ma'am"--she sounded less than compassionate--"but Dr. Herbert is a very busy man. Everybody wants to see him. Parents want to bring in their kids for the slightest cough. I mean, do you think he has time for that? No. You'll have to wait. Please understand. It's--"

Joanne slammed down the phone and closed her eyes. She leaned against the wall and crossed her arms. When she opened her eyes again, she shivered at the sight of more crumbs scattered across the kitchen table. Joanne started to sink down until she sat on the floor. Suddenly she jumped up and picked up the phone. She flipped through the Yellowbook perched beside her and dialed the number for the exterminator.

"If I can't fix one thing, I'll try and fix another."

The exterminator was available that very afternoon. Forty-five minutes after entering the house, the dark-haired and sallow man stared at his clipboard and asked Joanne to sit down. Joanne complied, praying that the annoyances that had grown into torment would end. His eyes flickered for a moment before he began with, "Look, Mrs. Stallings, given all the loose food you've said you've seen in your house recently, you probably won't believe me, but..." He placed the clipboard on his large lap. "I can't find any evidence of mice in the whole house. I've inspected every single corner. As owner of this business, I am first and foremost a salesman--I will admit to that. But I do have a conscience and I can't honestly say that you need me to treat this house for mice. There just aren't any around, not in the attic, the basement, anywhere."

"You're absolutely sure?"

"Yes, Mrs. Stallings. There's not a single squeak or rustle coming from your walls or even underneath your fridge," he said and chuckled, "I mean, unless they all skipped town when they heard I was coming..."

[Read the rest of the story here.]