drudgery, had to kill and skin two dozen sherbets to make it.”
“Thanks, Mom,” he said, grinning at her, then grinning even more
broadly at the sherbet before raising his eyes to the TV screen and
locking onto the cartoon again.
Sunday through Tuesday, he had stayed in bed without making a fuss, too
miserable even to agitate for television time. He had slept so much
that she’d begun to worry, but evidently sleep had been what he
needed.
Last night, for the first time since Sunday, he’d been able to keep
more than clear liquids in his stomach, he’d asked for sherbet and
hadn’t gotten sick on it. This morning he’d risked two slices of
unbuttered white toast, and now sherbet again. His fever had broken,
the flu seemed to be running its course.
Heather settled into another armchair. On the end table beside her, a
coffee-pot-shaped thermos and a heavy white ceramic mug with red and
purple flowers stood on a plastic tray. She uncapped the thermos and
refilled the mug with a premium coffee flavored with almond and
chocolate, relishing the fragrant steam, trying not to calculate the
cost per cup of this indulgence.
After curling her legs on the chair, pulling an afghan over her lap,
and sipping the brew, she picked up a paperback edition of a Dick
Francis novel.
She opened to the page she had marked with a slip of paper, and she
tried to return to a world of English manners, morals, and mysteries.
She felt guilty, though she was not neglecting anything to spend time
with a book. No housework needed to be done. When they’d both held
jobs, she and Jack had shared chores at home. They still shared
them.
When she’d been laid off, she’d insisted on taking over his domestic
duties, but he’d refused. He probably thought that letting her fill
her time with housework would lead her to the depressing conviction
that she would never find another job. He’d always been as sensitive
about other people’s feelings as he was optimistic about his own
prospects. As a result, the house was clean, the laundry was done, and
her only chore was to watch over Toby, which wasn’t a chore at all
because he was such a good kid. Her guilt was the irrational if
inescapable result of being, by nature and by choice, a working woman
who, in this deep recession, was not permitted to work.
She had submitted applications to twenty-six companies. Now all she
could do was wait. And read Dick Francis.
The melodramatic music and comic voices on the television didn’t
distract her.
Indeed, the fragrant coffee, the comfort of the chair, and the cold
sound of winter rain drumming on the roof combined to take her mind off
her worries and let her slip into the novel.
Heather had been reading fifteen minutes when Toby said, “Mom?”
“Hmmm?” she said, without looking up from her book.
“Why do cats always want to kill mice?”
Marking her place in the book with her thumb, she glanced at the
television, where a different cat and mouse were involved in another
slapstick chase, the former pursuing the latter this time.
“Why can’t they be friends with mice,” the boy asked, “instead of
wanting to kill them all the time?”
“It’s just a cat’s nature,” she said.
“But why?”
“It’s the way God made cats.”
“Doesn’t God like mice?”
“Well, He must, because He made mice too.”
“Then why make cats to kill them?”
“If mice didn’t have natural enemies like cats and owls and coyotes,
they’d overrun the world.”
“Why would they overrun the world?”
“Because they give birth to litters, not single babies.”
“So?”
“So if they didn’t have natural enemies to control their numbers,
there’d be a trillion billion mice eating up all the food in the world,
with nothing left for cats or us.”
“If God didn’t want mice to overrun the world, why didn’t He just make
them so they have single babies at a time?”
Adults always lost the Why Game, because eventually the train of
questions led to a dead-end track with no answer.
Heather said, “You got me there, kiddo.”