Short Story

DEAD, I SAID

by

Sophia Dembling
 

Although I have a key to my father's apartment, I always ring the bell. And although I visit every Thursday, Dad always acts surprised and indifferent when he opens the door. "Oh," he says. "It's you." And he turns his back to return to his favorite chair.

"Sorry," I say cheerfully, through gritted teeth. "Just me." Might as well throw out the first apology of the evening and get things rolling. The urge to apologize incessantly is the hallmark of my time with my father. From the moment of his disappointing, disappointed greeting, I feel the weight of responsibility for all he hasn't done.

In the course of his life, my father hasn't made a lot of money. He hasn't become famous. He hasn't romanced glamorous women. He hasn't written a best seller. He hasn't been on television. He hasn't traveled around the world. He hasn't even managed to produce a son. Only me, and then nothing more. I never asked him or my mother why, fearful the response would be, "Well, you were such a letdown, it hardly seemed worth trying again."

As always on this particular evening, I arrived at 7 bearing Chinese food and a few thriller novels, which my father read voraciously. This was my offering to him each week. I was not required to bring the books; they were my way of apologizing to him for the fact that he was old and I was young and he might need something to do with his time while I was out and about in the world. I was required to bring dinner, however, as he told me once he certainly couldn't feed me every week. As I had the apparently annoying habit of being hungry every evening around dinnertime, I had to fend for myself. And I might as well bring something for him, while I was about it.

"How are you doing?" I asked, following him into the living room. The cheerful prattle of "Friends," from the expensive color television I'd bought him last Christmas, seemed out of place in the dissatisfied air of the apartment, where the blinds were kept drawn and no clutter was ever allowed to gather, even around the chair where my father spent much of his time.

"Same as ever," he said, sighing his way back into his chair. "What kind of soup did you get me?"

"Wonton, as always," I said.

"Not always," he reminded me.

"Once, Dad. Once I got you sweet and sour. I thought you might like it, for a change."

"It had tofu in it. Nasty stuff. Slimy."

"Sorry, Dad." Dad settled back with a small, satisfied smile. He liked those sorries. He certainly liked those sorries.

I carried the food into the kitchen. Just once, I thought, he might have everything ready for dinner. Then I felt bad, since he was old and all. Sorry, I thought.

Dad's kitchen is a miracle of cleanliness. The counters gleam. The chrome faucets sparkle. The canned goods in the cabinet are arranged by size. He has a dishwasher but doesn't like to use it, claiming it doesn't get the dishes clean enough. But Dad doesn't just wash his dishes and stack them in the dishrack, as I do in my small, dishwasher-less flat. No, he washes, carefully dries, and puts them away each time he uses them. Not so much as a coffee cup ever sits in his sink. My mother and I, when we all lived together, used to drive him to near-fury with our untidy ways. My mother liked to scrape and rinse the dishes, then put them in the dishwasher to wait, sometimes a day or two, until she had a full load. Worse yet, I might make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then leave the still-gummy knife in the sink. This was heresy. No doubt it was in rebellion against my father's ways that caused me, as an adult in my own apartment, to allow it to be a perpetual stinkhole. My cockroaches have cockroaches. It's disgusting, but in a liberating way. I figured I'll outgrow my slovenly habits someday . Or I'll contract some hideous disease from the filth and die an ugly death, like my father has predicted. At least that might make him feel he'd accomplished something. He could say, "I told you so," to my grave. That would be one helluva big "I told you so." The mother of all "I told you sos."

I put dishes and the food on the table, careful to put paper towels under the cartons lest they leak on the spotless vinyl tablecloth.

"Food's on." I called.

I heard my father sigh deeply at the inconvenience of having to haul himself out of his chair again. I started spooning soup into the bowls. I'd gotten myself sweet and sour soup, as I always did. As Dad sat, he wrinkled his nose at it, as he always did.

"How can you eat that?" he said.

"I like it." I didn't bother getting annoyed any more. This was just another ritual. At one time, I hotly debated the merits of sweet and sour soup with my father during each visit, until finally deciding that it didn't really matter whether he liked sweet and sour soup or not. I spent two entire sessions with my therapist on the topic, which also became a touchstone of other issues for us. We called it the "sweet and sour syndrome." It would have been a lot less expensive for me to eat wonton soup. But it was the principal of the thing. At least I thought it was, until a couple of hundred dollars worth of therapy persuaded me otherwise. Anyway, we sat down to our dinner as we always did, and Dad took a noisy slurp of his wonton soup, as he always did, and I stifled my annoyance at the sound, as I always did, and suddenly I saw my father's eyes widen and his face go pale.

"What?" I said, panicked that he was having a heart attack and I wouldn't know what to do and what would people say if I let my father die right in front of me? (How many self-absorbed thoughts can dance on the head of a pin?)

"Rat," my father said, his voice barely a whisper, the spoon still held to his lips.

Rat? What could that mean? Was this to be the final mystery of his life, like Rosebud?

Dad put his spoon down, lifted a shaky finger, and pointed. "Rat," he said again.

I turned to look in the direction of his pointing finger, and there on the counter, sniffing calmly at the food-stained bag from our dinner, was a large greasy-looking rat. I jumped up, my chair clattered to the floor along with my spoonful of sweet and sour soup, the cube of tofu bouncing limply out. The rat jumped too and scuttled away, fitting itself into a spookily narrow space behind a cabinet.

My father looked stricken.

"A rat," he muttered. "How could I have a rat? They're for dirty people. What is he doing here?"

I edged over to the counter for a paper towel, certain the vile creature would jump out at me from whatever crevice he had hidden himself. I snatched a towel and jumped back, then bent to mop up the spilled soup.

"We have to kill it," my father said. "We have to kill it right away. I cannot sleep with a rat in the house."

We? I thought. I don't know anything about killing rats. And I didn't have rats in my house. Not that I knew of, anyway. I could just go home and continue my happily rat-free existence. But then, I knew I couldn't.

"How do you kill a rat?" I wondered aloud.

"I don't know," my father said irritably. "Do I look like the kind of person who would have rats?" His face was pinched in what, I thought, was a particularly rattish expression.

"Do I look like the kind of person who would have rats?" I said, matching his peevish tone. Don't answer that.

"I really don't know," said my father, standing up. "But I've lost my appetite. We're going to have to kill the thing tonight, or I don't know what." He shuffled as fast as he could into the living room. I followed.

"OK," I said. "I'll go to the store and see what I can find. Rat poison or something." Dad sat in his chair, picking up one of the books I brought, clutching it in both hands, ready to smash any rats that might venture into his space.

"Hurry," he said.

I was in my car and pulling out of the parking lot before realizing I had no idea where one went at 7:30 on a Thursday night for a crash course on rodent extermination. I just started driving. After a few blocks, I came to a small shopping center and, miraculously, an open hardware store. The glow of its fluorescent lights reassured me. I parked and ran in. "Can I help you?" said a pleasant looking man wearing a white coat, like a doctor.

"I have to kill a rat," I said, blushing. Would he think I was the kind of person who has rats? "It's for my father."

"Ah," the man said, turning to lead me down an aisle. "A birthday present?"

We were halfway down the aisle before I realized this was a joke. It was too late to laugh. We stopped at a shelf lined with bottles, boxes and jars marked with skulls and crossbones.

"Would you like to try poison?" the man inquired politely."Or would you prefer to trap it?"

"What's the difference?"

"Well," said the man, "With a poison, you run the risk of the rat dying in the walls, where you can't find him. This can lead to a certain, um, odor problem." I nodded gravely. "On the other hand," he continued. "With a rat trap, you do have to dispose of the rat. Some people are squeamish about this."

I nodded again.

"You realize, I hope," said the man, "that rats tend to live in colonies. Where there is one, there are bound to be others."

No, I didn't realize this. I'd never done much research into the social habits of rats. "We've only seen one. I just need to kill one right now. My father won't sleep unless I kill it."

The man nodded. "Then perhaps you'd better try traps," he said. "At least then you have proof of success. A trophy, so to speak."

Who knew hardware store guys were such wits? He picked up a box of traps. "They come in singles, two-packs, three packs, or the giant 12-pack," he said.

"Is it guaranteed I'll catch it?"

"Nothing is guaranteed in life, I'm afraid. But maybe you want the 12-pack, to increase your odds."

I nodded and took the box from him.

"And perhaps some bait?"

"He seemed to like Chinese food," I said. "He came out while we were eating it for dinner."

"Then he's probably hungry again by now," said the man. "Here's some rodent bait." He took another box from the shelf.

I drove back to my father's feeling well armed. My father sat where I'd left him, still clutching the book, poised for attack.

"Got the stuff," I said, as if I'd just negotiated a successful drug deal.

"What is it?"

"Traps," I said. "And bait."

I peeked into the kitchen, half expecting to be ambushed by a rat all hopped up on MSG. Nothing moved. Our food sat where we fled from it.

"You didn't clean up?" I said, surprised.

"No." Dad sounded uncomfortable. "I....the...the rat. I don't like rats." Dad looked tense and frail, clutching his trashy novel.

"Oh. Okay." This was news to me. I thought of Dad as obstinately disengaged from life. It somehow never occurred to me that he could be scared of anything. Silly thing for someone my age to admit, but I was too busy being annoyed by him to consider his inner life. I sat on the floor in front of the television and dumped the rat-killing equipment out of the bag. I opened the package of traps and pulled one out. It was like a giant mousetrap, archetypal. I held it in my hand. So familiar, yet I don't know that I'd ever actually seen one in real life before.

"Do you know how to use those things?" Dad asked, craning to see it.

"No, but we'll have to figure it out." I looked at the diagram and directions. "I need pliers," I said importantly. It may have been the first time in my life I'd ever uttered the word 'pliers.'

Dad jumped up and left the room. I heard him rummaging around in a hall closet. He came back carrying an ancient, rusty pair of pliers, which I took from him to carefully remove the staple that held the bar in place.

Place bait on trigger. I'd worry about that in a minute. Carefully pull back bow and hold down with thumb. I pulled the bow back. It took more strength than I expected. I had a burst of sympathy for the rat. Rotten way to go. Engage locking bar under curved portion of trigger. This one took me a moment. Curved portion? The diagram offered no clue. I fussed with it while my father sat watching.

"Can't set it?" he said.

"I can do it," I said. Anyone could set a mousetrap. I twitched it around a few minutes more, then finally figured it out.

"Aha," I said. I pulled the bow back again and held it carefully while I tucked the locking bar in place. I put the trap down gingerly, then picked up the pliers and carefully touched the trigger. The loud snap made us both jump. My heart pounded as we looked at the pliers, firmly caught in the treacherous metal bow.

"That oughtta do it," said my father with satisfaction.

"Yeah." I didn't like it. Not at all. Perhaps poison would have been a better idea. I could have set it and gone home and imagined forever that the rat never ate it, but just moved on to a messier kitchen, where compulsively tidy old men didn't deprive you of a little innocent garbage picking.

"Well," said my father. "Are you going to put them all out?"

"I will. But I'd better clean that food up first We want him to go for the bait, not the leftovers. Shall I bring it out for you?"

Dad shuddered. "I lost my appetite."

"It's just a rat," I said.

"Still," said my father. He shook his head.

I had to admit, the kitchen felt a little eerie, as if a disaster of some kind had just occurred there. I closed the food up and put it in the refrigerator. I'd take it home, if I could remember. If I ever got out of there. Before I put the soup away, though. I had an idea. I fished out one piece of tofu and one wonton and placed them carefully on a small dish.

I set all twelve traps carefully, placing them on the counter and on the floor. Then I put rat bait in ten of the traps, the wonton on one and the tofu on the last. Not that it would mean anything. No more than my getting annoyed with my father, anyway. A meaningless exercise. A waste of time and energy with results that would not affect the world one iota. I did it anyway. Maybe I'd find meaning in it later.

"You know, Dad," I called out, while carefully laying bait on the traps. "This might take a while. He might not come back at all."

There was silence from the other room.

"Dad?"

"Yes."

"It might take a while..."

"I heard you. So I guess you'll have to stay."

"Stay?"

"You have to take care of this. You have to stay."

"How long?"

"Until it's caught."

"That could take days."

"Overnight, then. You'll have to stay overnight. I can't sleep with that thing in the house."

I sighed. "Really?"

My reluctance hung in the air and I said a silent apology for it. Dad was not impressed. "OK, don't," he said. "Forget it. Don't worry about it. Just forget it." He was a guilt sharpshooter.

"OK, I will."

"No, never mind."

I wanted to shake him. I also wanted to cry.

"I will."

The silence from the other room sounded petulant. I set the last trap with the cube of tofu, and stood up. "OK," I said, moving back into the living room. Seinfeld was on.

"I hate these idiots," Dad said. "Never know what the hell they're talking about." I sunk into the couch. I liked Seinfeld.

We sat glumly and let Must See TV fill the silence between us. We both kept an ear cocked towards the kitchen, waiting for the grim snap that would signal the breaking of a little rodent neck. I doubted we would hear it over the laugh track, but I listened anyway. Maybe it would happen between yoks.

It didn't happen. We sat through the news, and then sitcom reruns. I got sleepy and stretched out on the couch, but Dad remained poised. I looked at him through heavy lids. He looked old, afraid, hardly worth fighting with.

"Dad?" I said sleepily.

"Eh?" he said, obviously only half listening.

What did I want to ask? Was he lonely? Did he miss Mom? Had he had sex even once in all the years she'd been gone? Of course, I couldn't ask any of those things. Could I ever make him talk, tell me something important, confide in me? I hadn't a clue how, though as the hour grew later, I felt a sort of groggy affection for the old bastard. I felt like we were poised, in our forced togetherness, on the brink of a potential Hallmark moment. We could bond. Our hearts could meet. It could turn our relationship around. "It's late," I said. "Don't you want to go to sleep?"

He looked at me sharply. "Don't you think I know when to go to bed?"

"I was just wondering."

"I'm a big boy."

"Sorry."

The moment slipped out of grasp, and I left my father to his own deep feelings, the ones I didn't know how to reach even when I wanted to, which wasn't often. We watched TV silently. Dad laughed at I Love Lucy. I find the show thoroughly irritating.

"Dad?"

"What?"

This time he was more alert, poised for whatever cockamamie question I had now. "Aren't you hungry?"

"A little."

"I could heat up the Chinese food"

Dad shuddered.

"I don't know if I'll ever be able to eat Chinese food again."

"Then how about a sandwich? I could make us sandwiches. You have some ham, don't you? And bread?"

"You can't go in there. What about the rat?"

"Well, if it comes at me, I'll just have to kill it. I'll cut off it's tail with a carving knife."

"That was mice," he said.

"I'll use a bigger knife." How come Lucy Ricardo could make him laugh but I couldn't even make him smile? I got up.

"I'll make you a sandwich."

He didn't stop me, so I went into the kitchen. I'd never been aware of a particular fear of rats. Perhaps my father's terror was contagious, or perhaps I'd just never given rats much thought before now. But I tiptoed into the kitchen, certain a rat of Herculean proportions would charge me at any moment. The kitchen was quiet. The traps sat calmly, waiting to perform their dire duty. The tofu and the wonton looked equally unappetizing, under the circumstances. And it suddenly occurred to me that I wasn't sure if I should root for the tofu or the wonton. Dad probably wouldn't be impressed if the rat chose the tofu. What would it prove? That tofu made good rat bait? And if it chose the wonton, Dad could claim even rats had better taste than I.

I opened the refrigerator as quietly as I could, and took out a package of pressed ham, the revolting sort of pseudo-ham my father preferred. Then I carefully, carefully slid open the lid of the bread box -- and that's when I heard the snap, and a horrible squeal, like a kitten under a rocking chair, behind me.

"What was that?" Dad shrieked.

Still clutching the package of fake ham, I turned slowly.

The nerve of that rat, stepping into the kitchen while I was in there, making ham sandwiches. Perhaps it deserved to die. But like this? The trap, set near the base of the refrigerator, had snapped closed on the rat's snout, mangling it into a horrible shape. It's nose pointed straight up. It made a horrible high-pitched whine and its nasty little body twitched and flailed.

"We got it." I called to Dad. My two mouthfuls of sweet and sour soup churned in my stomach. The rat, in fact, had gone straight for the real rat bait, ignoring both the tofu and the wonton. What this proved I still don't know, but I took a moment to note it before considering my next problem: what to do with a wounded rat.

"Is it dead?' Dad peered in the doorway.

"Not quite," I said.

"It's still alive?" There was an edge of hysteria to his voice now. Fine, I thought. A half-dead rat and a hysterical old man. I was in way over my head.

"Well do something, do something," Dad whimpered.

"Do what? I forgot my shotgun."

"A gun? You need a gun? Can't you kill it without a gun? I don't have a gun. I thought those traps were supposed to kill them. You didn't say anything about a gun before."

"No Dad, no. I was just kidding. I don't need a gun. But we're going to have to figure out how to kill him."

"Kidding? That's not funny. This is not a funny situation. None of this is funny. Don't kid."

"Why don't you go back to the living room?" I said, trying to sound soothing. Dad didn't go back to the living room. He stood in the doorway, clutching Tom Clancy like a talisman while I contemplated the rat in its gruesome death throes. I really didn't have a clue what to do.

"Maybe you should hit it with something," Dad suggested.

"Like what?"

"Frying pan?"

It was better than anything I'd come up with. I rummaged around under the sink until I found a heavy cast iron pan.

"Not that one! That was a wedding present."

"Well, it's the best I can find for rat bashing," I said.

Dad said nothing, but just nodded. I felt kind of bad for a moment, using this last wisp of his sentimentality to brain a rat, but I really needed to kill the damn thing and get home. The evening was going on too long and getting too strange.

"You might not want to watch this," I warned Dad, as I raised the heavy pan. What I meant was I didn't want to watch this, but I apparently had no choice.

"Kill it," Dad said, sounding less bloodthirsty than desperate. I raised the pan above my head, turning my face away and closing my eyes to remove myself from the whole scene. Without looking, I brought the pan down hard on the rat and the trap. It landed with a soft thud and I swear I could feel tiny rat bones snapping. I let go and left the pan where it lay.

"Is it dead?" Dad asked faintly.

I carefully lifted the pan. The rat was motionless, its snout still pinned by the bar, its body twisted at an unnatural angle from its head. I very gingerly poked at it with the package of pressed ham. The little fella was limp and lifeless. Just the slightest bit of goo oozed from one spot, but otherwise, he was more or less intact externally, like a balloon filled with chili.

My lunch rose for a quick visit but I swallowed it back. Then I felt a strange pang of regret.

"I think it's dead," I said.

"Are you sure?"

I poked it harder. It didn't even twitch.

"Dead," I said, with a solemnity that a rat may or may not deserve.

I don't think I'll ever forget the relief that washed over Dad's face. He reached out and put a trembling hand on my arm.

"Thank you, Scout," he said, using a nickname for me I hadn't heard since I was ten years old. I hated it back then, but it sounded pretty good tonight. "I don't know what I would have done without you." Dad looked right into my eyes, like he meant everything he said and patted my arm. Then he turned away and went back to his chair, his TV, and Tom Clancy.

After recovering my equilibrium, I picked the rat up with a plastic bag, wrapped it thoroughly, and tossed it in the dumpster outside, along with all the other traps, including those set with the tofu and the dumpling. Dad hadn't noticed my experiment and I didn't mention it. What the hell.



§ § §

Sophia Dembling is a freelance writer in Dallas, Texas. Her fiction has appeared in Thema, fugue, and the Rockford Review, and her first published short story, "Fat," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Sophia's non-fiction articles and essays have been published in newspapers and magazines nationwide; she is author of The Yankee Chick's Survival Guide to Texas (Republic of Texas Press); and she is currently working on a novel, titled "Breeder." Sophia may be contacted at Sophia@yankeechick.com

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