Set This House In Order Part 17

And Mouse nodded to herself, and washed her hands, and after last bell she went home and told her mother she'd signed up for the letter-writing program. And a surprisingly short time after that the first of many envelopes from the English Society of International Correspondents appeared in the Drivers'

mailbox. Mouse, who found it there, shook her head in disbelief at the return address, and also at the stamp: a colorful twopence stamp, with a portrait of Queen Elizabeth and a smudged cancellation mark that did not extend onto the envelope itself. The stamp looked as though it had been glued in place with rubber cement.

Two pence, Mouse thought. Two pennies. Was that enough to mail a letter all the way from England to America? She very much doubted it, and her doubt churned up a memory of being in Bartleby's on Third Street with her mother not long ago. Bartleby's sold fine stationery, and also had a small section devoted to stamp and coin collecting. You could buy canceled foreign stamps there. . . or steal them, Mouse supposed.

The envelope was a prank, like the circular before it. Mouse would have destroyed it if she dared, but she didn't dare, and anyway by now her mother had seen it and grabbed it from her and was cooing over it, with none of Mouse's skepticism.

"Let's see what we've got here," Mouse's mother said. Too impatient to get a letter opener, she attacked the envelope like a grizzly bear ripping into a honeycomb. The simile was apt: having torn open the flap, she actually stuck her nose inside -- and jerked back, as if stung. She tried again, reaching in more carefully with a pawlike hand -- and jerked that back too. "d.a.m.n it!" she swore. "d.a.m.n it! d.a.m.n it! d.a.m.n it! f.u.c.k!" The fit of fury vanished as quickly as it had come, and was replaced by a sullen petulance. "Here," she said, shoving the envelope at Mouse. "You do it."

When Mouse carefully spread the top of the envelope and peeped inside, she found neither honey nor stinging bees, but a second, smaller envelope, addressed simply "From Miss Penelope Ariadne Jones, To Miss Penny Driver." Mouse saw at once what had upset her mother: the inside envelope was purple.

Purple, her mother's unlucky color -- a color that, like garlic to a vampire, produced an almost allergic reaction in Verna Driver. Mouse's head rocked back and forth on her neck, not-quite nodding.

Her mother couldn't read the letter; the letter was for her eyes only.

"Well go on!" her mother snapped, raising a threatening hand. "Open it!"

Mouse opened the purple envelope. The two sheets of stationery inside were also purple, and covered in longhand, a longhand she knew. "My Dear Miss Driver," she read, "it is with the greatest pleasure that I begin what I hope will be a long correspondence with you. . ."

The letter's brief overview of life in "Century Village, Dorset" was as transparently fake as the return address on the outer envelope. Large portions of it appeared to have been plagiarized from a Jane Austen novel, or possibly a Harlequin romance. But it acted like a balm on Mouse's mother, the grizzly bear getting her honey at last; she ate it up, giving no sign that she suspected it was anything other than what it purported to be. Meanwhile Mouse had to fight to stay focused on what she was reading -- she kept glancing ahead, looking for a hidden message, a letter-within-the-letter, meant only for her.

Eventually she found it: at the very end, beneath "Penelope Jones"'s signature, there was a line that said, "DO NOT READ THIS PART ALOUD," and beneath that, a postscript that turned out to be a memorandum, warning her about something that Cindy Wheaton was planning to do to her in gym cla.s.s.

After she'd gotten over her initial surprise, Mouse decided she was angry with the memorandum-writer for choosing such a complicated and potentially risky subterfuge. What if her mother's enthusiasm for things British had overcome her phobia for purple? Then she would have read the letter herself, including the memorandum, and realized it was all a trick -- and who knew what she might have done to Mouse then? Even if the trick were never exposed, this method of delivering memoranda created extra work for Mouse, because of course the first thing her mother did after Mouse finished reading was tell her that she must write back, immediately. She insisted on supervising, too: hanging over Mouse's shoulder as she crafted her reply, criticizing every sentence, every turn of phrase.

It was only later that Mouse realized that tricking her mother -- and tricking her in as blatant a manner as possible -- was not just a means to an end but was in fact one of the memorandum-writer's goals. The memorandum-writer was angry, too; this was made abundantly clear by Penelope Ariadne Jones's second letter to Mouse, which began: My Dear Miss Driver, Greetings to you and your family from enchanting Dorset. On behalf of myself and my fellow Englanders, please tell your mother that she is an ugly old c.u.n.t, we woud love to take a big stinking s.h.i.t on her and stick her f.u.c.king nice things up her motherf.u.c.king a.s.sHOLE. . .

Mouse, reading this aloud, stopped short on "please tell your mother that," and gaped in horror at the words that followed.

"Little Mouse?" her mother said, in the abrupt silence. "What is it? What does she want you to tell me?"

And Mouse looked up, choking on dread, and then she was folding the letter away as her mother said, "That was so beautiful, what a nice girl, why can't you be more like her?"

As soon as she was alone, Mouse tore that letter into shreds, not even checking it for a memorandum. "No more," she said -- half commanding, half pleading -- as she flushed the remnants of the letter down the toilet. "No more, no more, no more."

But there were more, of course. The envelopes from the English Society of International Correspondents continued to turn up in the months and years that followed. Mouse's mother never caught on to the trick, though she did destroy a number of the letters herself, during rages of frustration brought on by Penelope Jones's persistent refusal to switch to a more agreeable color of stationery. So some of the memoranda were lost, but most got through; and even after Mouse left home, even after her mother died and was put in the ground, the memorandum-writer continued to send important messages in care of the English Society, as a kind of inside joke.

And now here is another one. Mouse takes a b.u.t.ter knife from the silverware drawer and neatly slits the top of the envelope. She extracts the smaller envelope from inside it, secretly pleased by the rich purple hue, magic ward against her mother. "From Miss Penelope Ariadne Jones," she reads, "To Miss Penny Driver," and that pleases her too. Though the memoranda within typically refer to her as Mouse, on the outside of the envelope she is always Penny, and she likes that name. She wishes desperately that she could convince people to call her by it, but almost no one ever does.

She slits open the top of the purple envelope, too, and pulls out a single sheet of lavender stationery. On it is written: THINGS TO DO TODAY (Sunday, 4/27/97): 1. SHOWER.

2. DRESS NICE.

3. MEET ANDY GAGE OUTSIDE HARVEST MOON DINER AT NOON.

4. LISTEN TO HIM.

Odd. It's not a memorandum at all, it's a list. For it to be delivered this way must mean it's important, but Mouse is puzzled. Meet Andy Gage? What for? And listen to him about what? What could he possibly have to tell her that would warrant such special notice?

Maybe it's not such a mystery. Maybe she's only pretending to be puzzled, to conceal the fact that she's been expecting something like this. Because the thing that comes immediately to mind, when she asks herself what this could be about, is that strange conversation she overheard at the Reality Factory on Monday. The conversation between Andrew and Julie, that Mouse eavesdropped on from between the tents. The conversation that seemed to be about her.

Yes, that's definitely it -- Mouse is all at once sure, without knowing how she is sure. But she doesn't have time to mull it over further now. It's almost eleven o'clock, and if she is going to get herself cleaned up, dressed, and out to Autumn Creek by noon, she will have to move quickly.

She hobbles back through the apartment to the bathroom, trying not to track too much blood on the floor in the process. As she sits on the edge of the tub and pulls the gla.s.s sliver from the sole of her foot, her hands shake, but not from pain.

Mouse is excited.

Mouse is afraid.

11.

When she first spots Andy Gage in front of the Harvest Moon Diner an hour later, Mouse flashes back on a photograph of her father. Not the solemn honeymoon photograph that brooded over her mother's dining table, but another, more congenial portrait that sat on the fireplace mantel in her grandmother's house.

The mantelpiece photo was taken on the morning after her father's high school prom. Morgan Driver and his friends had gone out cruising after the last dance, and ended up crashing their car into a ditch. Though no one was seriously hurt, they were far enough out in the countryside that it took them the rest of the night to get back to town. Around dawn, Mouse's father's date had snapped the picture: Morgan Driver, walking backwards along the side of the road, thumb outstretched to flag down a pa.s.sing car. He had his jacket slung over his shoulder; his black tie hung loose around his collar, and his shirt was untucked. An unlit cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth, and he was smiling, despite a nasty-looking gash above his left eye.

This photograph no longer exists. Mouse's mother burned it, along with several sc.r.a.pbooks'

worth of other photographs, shortly after Grandma Driver's death. Those pictures were undignified, she said when Mouse asked her why. By this she meant that the pictures did not fit the image of her husband that she wanted to perpetuate -- like Grandma Driver's stories, they seemed to refer to a different person altogether, a Morgan Driver who smoked, and drank, and told dirty jokes, and, when he was eight, jumped into mud puddles with both feet.

Mouse is sorry that her mother destroyed them all, but the pictures remain sharp in her memory -- it is almost as if she has actual copies of her grandmother's sc.r.a.pbooks in her head, that she can leaf through whenever she wants to. And the after-prom photograph -- that sits on a mantel in Mouse's mind now, as tangible as ever.

It's not immediately clear why Andy Gage should remind her of that photo. Standing on the sidewalk in front of the Harvest Moon, he is not trying to hitch a ride, or even paying attention to the traffic. His dress is casual but neat -- jacket on, collar b.u.t.toned. He isn't bleeding from his forehead.

What it is, she decides, is something in his bearing. Andrew stands at ease, comfortable in the world, in a way that Mouse almost never is, in a way that she imagines her father always was, at least until he got married.

As she drives closer, she sees that Andrew is talking to himself. Telling himself jokes, maybe -- he just burst out laughing. This is crazy behavior, but Andrew seems completely unselfconscious about it.

When he notices Mouse in her Buick, instead of acting caught out -- the way Mouse would, if someone had seen her talking to herself -- he just smiles and waves. Comfortable in the world.

Mouse drives into the lot behind the diner, and parks in the corner farthest from the entrance so that she will have as much time as possible to compose herself. She checks herself in the rearview mirror, then checks her list to see if any new instructions have been added to it. None have; there are still no clues about what Andrew has to tell her, no hints about what might be expected of her beyond listening.

She opens her door and gets out. Andrew is walking towards her across the lot, his hands in his pockets. Now he looks self-conscious. He is not as uneasy as he was last Monday, when they drove here together from the Reality Factory, but he is clearly thinking hard about something.

"Hi," Mouse says, just to get things rolling, and to make it seem like she knows what she's doing.

Andrew, for his part, is content to appear confused. "Penny?" he inquires, as if they'd never met in person before. Mouse resists a powerful urge to reply, "Yes, it's me," and merely nods.

After that, there is an awkward pause. Mouse's instructions are to listen, not talk; besides, she needs Andrew to talk first, so she can follow his cues. But Andrew acts as if he's working off the same list, waiting for her to say something.

Finally, he breaks the silence: "You don't know why you're here, do you?"

Mouse blinks. She wonders whether she misheard, but Andrew follows up with an even more startling declaration: "When you got up this morning, you didn't have any plans to come out to Autumn Creek today. But then you got a message -- a note, or maybe a list -- telling you to meet me here at --"

They're in a park, sitting on opposite ends of a long wooden bench. Mouse's cheeks are flushed, and she's a little out of breath; Andrew's cheeks are flushed, too. He's still got his hands in his pockets, and he's holding his arms close to the side of his body, occupying as little of the bench as possible, as if trying not to crowd her.

They don't appear to be in the middle of a conversation -- Andrew's not even looking at her -- so Mouse swivels her head, takes a quick look around. She doesn't recognize this park, or any of the houses in the adjoining street, but she a.s.sumes they are still in Autumn Creek. The Navigator points out that the sun has not changed position in the sky, so she can't have been gone long.

"Five minutes," Andrew says.

Mouse stares at him.

"We left the diner parking lot about five minutes ago," he tells her. "This is Maynard Park, four blocks south of Bridge Street. You were walking very fast." He stops to take a breath, and turns his head very slowly to face her. "Penny?"

Mouse gets it now: why he says her name as if it were a question: he knows. He knows about her blackouts, and he knows about her lists. What else does he know?

"I'm sorry if I spooked you back there," he continues, looking away again. "My father told me to be blunt. I hope that's right -- I've never actually done this before."

How do you know about the lists? Mouse thinks, but doesn't say.

"You're wondering how I know about your lists," Andrew tells her. "And your b --"

Mouse is standing with her back up against a tree, and she is very out of breath now, hyperventilating. Her eyes are shut tight; she forces herself to open them, and sees more trees, all around her. She's in the woods, alone.

No, not alone: "Penny?" His voice, quiet but close, nearly frightens her away again. Mouse begins to fade but then rebounds, ejected from the darkness by the mental equivalent of a shove in the back.

"Penny, please don't be afraid of me," Andrew says. "I'm not trying to scare you; I just want to help. I know what you've been going through, and I need you to know that I know, so that we can talk about it. . ."

Mouse turns her head and he is there, about ten paces off to her left. He shuffles sideways into her field of view, keeping his hands in the air, like a bank robber trying to surrender. "I just want to help,"

he says again. He doesn't try to get any closer to her; instead he drops down where he is, and sits on the ground. "I'll just stay over here, OK?"

This act -- plopping down casually in the dirt, like it's no big deal if his pants get muddy -- makes Mouse think of her father again, her grandmother's version of her father. The thought doesn't completely calm her down, but it does distract her, momentarily, from the fact that she's frightened. She comes off the tree, and turns fully to face him.

"I'm sorry if this is upsetting to you, Penny," Andrew says. "But I do know about your blackouts, and about --"

"How?" The word comes out as a high squeak, but he understands.

"You aren't the only person in the world this has ever happened to. There are others."

Mouse raises a shaky hand, and points. "You?"

It's a yes-or-no question, but he frowns and says, "Not exactly." Then: "It's complicated. . . My father had blackouts like you do. He lost time -- sometimes minutes, sometimes days -- and he had to keep lists of things to do to keep himself oriented. Even with the lists, he was always getting in trouble, getting blamed for things he didn't remember doing. He couldn't keep his checkbook balanced. He was constantly losing things that belonged to him, and finding things that didn't belong to him -- like clothes, for instance, not just individual pieces but whole wardrobes, clothes that fit him but that he hadn't bought, that he wouldn't have bought. . ."

Mouse, feeling faint, puts out a hand to the tree to steady herself.

"And the messages. He got anonymous notes, sometimes, or messages on his answering machine. Sometimes it was useful advice, but other times it was just meanness -- insults, or even threats.

Sometimes it was both at once, in the same message, like whoever was trying to help him was really fed up with him, too."

"The Society," says Mouse.

"What?" Andrew says.

"Oh," Andrew says. "Penny?"

"Yes," says Mouse, not standing by the tree anymore but squatting on her heels in front of him, with her arms wrapped around her shins and her chin on her knee. She's caught her breath now, and she feels at least a little calmer.

"The souls -- the people -- who sent messages to my father didn't have a special name for themselves," Andrew continues. "They weren't trying to fool anybody. I'm sure my father would have preferred it if they had been a little secretive -- he couldn't afford to live alone, and when his apartment mates overheard some of the answering-machine messages he got. . . well, sometimes it was pretty embarra.s.sing."

Was. Mouse hasn't overlooked Andrew's use of the past tense. She doesn't want to ask this next question, but she needs to know: "What happened to your father?" Then, before Andrew can answer, she answers for him: "He got locked up, didn't he? For being crazy?"

"What?" says Andrew, looking surprised. "No. . . I mean, no, he wasn't crazy. He did have some trouble with a few people thinking he was crazy, but. . ."

"He got locked up," Mouse says, nodding to herself.

"Not permanently," Andrew says. "For a little while, once -- OK, twice. But he got out again, both times, because he wasn't really crazy. And eventually he got help: he found a way to stop the blackouts. Penny? There's a way to stop the blackouts."

He is lying to her; he must be. It is a cruel trick, to get the Society to order her out here just so he can frighten her with his knowledge of her insanity, and then lie to her.

Mouse sighs deeply, to keep from crying. "How?" she asks. "How did he stop the blackouts?"

"He built a house," says Andrew.

This time she's sure she's misheard. "He. . ."

"He built a house," repeats Andrew. He frowns again. "Look, this is hard. . . I want to be totally straight with you, but I'm worried that if I don't explain this just right you're going to end up thinking I'm crazy. Either that, or you'll get scared and start running again. So will you do me a favor? Will you come with me right now and let me show you something? I don't know if it'll really help, but. . . it might. At least it might help me find the right words to say."

"Come with you where?" Mouse says guardedly.

"To where I live. It's not far -- just a few blocks up, on the other side of Bridge Street."

"OK," Mouse says, thinking: Maybe he is crazy.

They stand up -- Mouse's knees are sore from squatting -- and he leads her out of the woods, which turn out to be a part of Maynard Park. As they leave the park and walk north, Mouse notices that Andrew is talking to himself again. It's mostly indistinct muttering, but Mouse catches her given name at least twice, and at one point Andrew exclaims "Cut it out!" loud enough to make her jump. Mouse is disturbed, not so much by the one-sided conversation itself as by the fear that, if it goes on much longer, she may start hearing a second voice.

Mouse thinks: I'm not going to keep following him. When we get to Bridge Street, I'm going to turn off, go back to the diner, get in my car, and drive home. He can't stop me.

She resolves herself to this, and takes another step, and then her hand is in her pocket, clenched around the Society's list. In her mind's eye, Mouse sees the last item, underscored: 4. LISTEN TO HIM.

They come to Bridge Street. Mouse does not turn off in the direction of the diner. Andrew crosses the street, and she follows him.

As they step onto the far curb, a voice calls to them: "Hey! Hey, Andrew! Mouse!"

It is Julie, waving frantically from down the block. When Andrew sees her he lets out a small hiss of annoyance. "Ah, Julie, not now," he mutters.

"-- means well. And I, I really do care about her. A lot. But sometimes. . ."

Julie Sivik and Bridge Street are gone. Andrew and Mouse are walking along a quiet residential avenue.

"Anyway," Andrew concludes, as if winding up a lengthy oration. He gestures to a big house up ahead on the left. "It's this one."

A woman with white hair opens the front door of the house as they approach. "h.e.l.lo, Mrs.