The Rat
Marty’s new neighbour is named Geraldine. She has three kids, a weed habit, and likes to take long phone calls while pacing up and down her narrow downtown yard.
Watching Geraldine smoke her vape and squish snails under her Birkenstocks while she talks on the phone is Marty’s favourite part of the day. She wishes Geraldine was talking to her instead of the person on the other line.
Marty sits on her deck with a glass of water. Geraldine is pacing parallel to the line dividing their properties, when Marty sees a rat run down the slope of the yard. Frightened by rats, Marty retreats inside.
She could warn Geraldine. She could tell her to get a cat.
Although Marty knows this is not Geraldine’s problem. Like everything else in her life, Marty has failed to deal with the rat.
The rat is hers, like a pet it comes and goes inside her crumbling basement walls. She hears it running along the ceiling when she reads in her living room. She tried setting traps for it but the rat is far too smart. Just last week, Marty tried slathering dog treats in peanut butter, but still, nothing.
From her row-house bedroom, Marty can hear her neighbours on both sides going about their lives. It is comforting, like she is in the room with them.
When she cries she wonders if her neighbours can hear her, and whether they talk about how pitiful she is.
She doesn’t think it’s possible to feel more lonely than this. Unless she does something about it soon, she will be lonely forever.
Marty is turning thirty in a month and will celebrate alone or with her parents. She used to have a boyfriend but when the pandemic hit, they broke up. David wasn’t great for her, anyway. He was even more depressed than Marty. He fed on her bad moods like mold on rotten fruit. They competed to be the most miserable person in the relationship. David moved out two years ago this month, and Marty has been alone ever since. Most of her university friends are having kids or they work time-consuming jobs like nursing and go to Barbados on their time off with their boyfriends. They don’t have time for friendship. At least not with Marty.
In the morning, Marty would knock on Geraldine’s door and tell her the rat is all her fault. That she can’t catch it. She would offer to pay for pest control to come to both of their houses.
Marty knocks on the white front door. Greeting her from the other side is a small child, backed by a slightly larger child. Like two nesting dolls.
“Hi,” the smaller one says. “You got any packages for me?”
The bigger one just stares.
“No I want to say hello to your mom,” Marty says and they dash away yelling for their mother, who is already coming down the hallway, baby in her arms.
“What’s wrong?” Geraldine says quickly. Marty hadn’t thought she looked like something was wrong. But her face is probably doing weird things.
“Nothing! I mean, not anything serious. Not really. I wouldn’t say it was really bad or anything,” Marty spits out, incompetently.
Geraldine looks at her, straight-faced, un-quizzically, the same stare Marty got from the bigger kid a few moments earlier.
“It’s just that there’s a rat. I saw a rat running through your back yard last night. I thought you’d like to know. I would like to know if it was my yard. I’d get a cat, myself, if I had rats in my yard. And well, the rat is sort of my rat, my problem, I just—”
“Ok, thanks I guess,” Geraldine starts to close the door. “I’m pretty busy here. Have a good one, thanks again.”
“Wait!” Marty scrambles to give a reason for Geraldine to stay at the door. “Do you want to come over sometime? I didn’t properly welcome you to the neighbourhood yet. We can have tea and I’ll give you a rundown of who’s who on our street. We can call pest control together.”
“Who are you again?”
“Marty, I live next door. You know, in number thirteen?” Marty can feel heat in her cheeks.
Geraldine develops a hint of a smirk on her face. “Ok Marty. We can have a drink. Maybe tonight? I have to get the kids to bed, but yeah, whatever.” The baby in her arms fusses. “I was just about to lay him down for his nap.” Geraldine gets out her phone. “What’s your number? I’ll text you when they’re all asleep tonight, if you want to hang out you’ll have to come here.”
The inside of Geraldine’s house is just how Marty imagined it would be. There are half empty moving boxes stacked up haphazardly in the hallway. Of the three pendant lights dangling from the cracking plaster ceiling, only one of them has a bulb. There is a bulging black garbage bag ready for collection day. The smell can only really be described as damp.
Even though the house is a mirror image of her own, the owner of Geraldine’s house barely maintains it, which keeps it looking like the rental it is. The paint peeling off the back end of the house, but the front freshly done. The front yard is always clean but the back has three old barbecues and a goutweed patch the size of Marty’s living room.
The state of the backyard should probably bother her more, but Marty isn’t really into gardening. She is far too anhedonic to care about what her garden looks like, let alone her neighbour’s.
“So are rats like, common here?” Geraldine asks, handing Marty a scalding cup of Tetley tea with the bag still in. “Sorry, I only have canned milk. It’s the only way tea tastes good with this fucking downtown water.”
“Where are you from?” Marty asks, her hands uncomfortable around the cup.
“Bay Roberts.” Geraldine says this as if it should be obvious.
Marty has never been friends with someone who grew up beyond the overpass before. She is a townie through to her bones.
“When did you move to town?”
“A long time ago. I mean, I’ve been back home to live a couple times since, like when we’re between places or whatever. Just signed a year lease on this place though, so hopefully it works out for a little while. You wanna go outside with me? I need a smoke.”
Marty follows Geraldine through the glass door that leads outdoors. There is no screen in the screen door. Marty has a sudden urge to become handy, so she can fix it for Geraldine.
“Sorry, what was your name again? I’m terrible.”
“Marty. Short for Martine, which I hate.”
“Marty’s nice. How long have you lived here?” Geraldine takes a drag of her cigarette.
“Four years. My parents bought me this house, just a month before the pandemic started. Otherwise I could never afford this neighbourhood. It’s a great street for kids though, I bet yours will get to know the rest of the kids pretty quickly.”
“Listen, you’re not going to judge me if I light this joint are you?” Geraldine pulls a pinner out of her cigarette pack.
Marty pushes her dirty hair back behind her ears and smiles. She hasn’t showered in days. She briefly contemplated it before coming here, but she couldn’t make herself turn on the water. “It’s ok, you don’t have to worry about me judging you.”
“So where did you see this rat again? That’s why you’re here, right?” Geraldine asks.
Marty gets up and walks down the yard toward the rear slope. There is an unused chicken coop in the back that the homeowners built before they got divorced and started renting the house.
“It came from under the chicken coop,” Marty gestures with her foot.
“It’s weird that there’s a chicken coop here. My landlord don’t allow pets,” Geraldine puffs out a cloud of smoke that betrays a massive lung capacity.
“If you want, you can get a cat and I’ll pretend it’s mine when your inspections happen,” Marty offers. “Everyone lets their cats outside here.”
“Why don’t you just get a cat and let it outdoors.”
“I’m not really a cat person.”
Marty looks up the yard, trying to catch a glimpse of the rat. She knows it’s here, can feel its presence like it’s her roommate.
The thought of owning an animal makes Marty nervous. What if she forgot to feed it? Sometimes she goes for days without remembering to feed herself. She wouldn’t be able to take care of another living being.
“Alright lady,” Geraldine rubs out her joint on the algae-stained deck boards. “I gotta go clean the house up now that the monsters are asleep.”
“I can help you if you want,” Marty smiles.
“Listen, it’s nice that you warned me about the rat. But I got shit to do.”
Marty feels sadness well up around her face. She cries randomly at inopportune times, in front of grocery clerks and mail delivery people. She has been working on stopping it. She goes to somatic therapy, practices pushing the tears down to her toes, rooting herself into the ground like a weedy maple, watering it with her eyes.
Geraldine sees the tears. “Oh hey, what’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” Marty wipes her face. “I just do that sometimes. The tears, I mean. They just fall out.”
She is being such a weirdo. This is why Marty usually stays at home alone. She tries to steady herself.
In the Peruvian Rainforest, butterflies drink turtle tears in order to survive. Far away from the coast, rainwater in the Andes is lacking in sodium. Parrots lick clay cliff faces to get their salt. Bugs drink your sweat. In Washington, goats that are not native to a national park are ravenous for human pee for sodium. Her thoughts help her calm down.
“Hey, hey… it’s okay, you can stay and help me clean, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry!” Geraldine jumps up then. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
Marty follows Geraldine inside the house like a kitten.
“It’s just been so long since I’ve really socialized, I guess,” Marty apologizes. “It’s been so nice having you next door, listening to the kids makes me feel less alone. Like I’m alive.”
Geraldine turns on the tap, dangles the kettle under the water like a child at a fountain.
Marty can feel the swell of tears receding.
Geraldine laughs. “I’m glad someone likes the noise, my head’s ready to explode any fucking day now.”
Marty looks at her a little more closely. She looks dehydrated. Her face is hard around the top, like a stale muffin. Creases frozen in place, not wrinkles exactly, more like permanent furrows. Being a mom seems really hard. Marty could never do it.
“How old are your kids?”
“One and a half, five, and seven.”
“And you’re a single mom?”
“Now I am, yeah. Wasn’t always. The pandemic did some funny shit to their dad. He started talking to people who weren’t really there. I dunno. We were on a trip to his mom’s place in Ontario and he just snapped. I think it was the covid, he turned into this paranoid rambler. Always talking about things that only he could see and hear. It was pretty freaky.”
“That sounds really hard, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, thanks. He doesn’t know where we live and I gotta keep it that way.”
Geraldine wipes the day’s bagel crumbs off the counter, pushing them onto a plate, dumping the contents of the plate into the garbage.
“What about family? Do you have anyone who helps with childcare?”
“Not anymore. Mom’s in this scam, though she don’t see it that way. Buddy starts messaging her on Plenty of Fish at the beginning of covid, saying he has lots of money but needs to get to his bank, in-person, to free it up. So he can get to the bank, he tells her to send him three grand to fly from Qatar to wherever the hell the bank was to. Mom sends him all her money. Since then she’s been waiting for him to come to Newfoundland. Like, he still messages her every day. They talk on Skype and stuff. But the fucker’s scamming her. It pisses me off.”
Geraldine slams the dishwasher shut. “And fadder’s been off on his own drinking himself to death since the day he had kids.”
“I’m so sorry,” Marty says again. “Have you reported the scam?”
“No maid. I don’t have time to be at that.”
“I can do it for you, if you want.”
Geraldine stops wiping the counter. “Listen, don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t even know you.”
Marty picks dirt out from under her fingernails. “I just don’t really have anything going on, trying to stay busy.”
“You can’t trust people these days,” Geraldine sprays Windex on the door of the microwave. “You trust someone and the next minute they’re scamming you. I got three kids. I can’t afford to get scammed.”
“I’m not going to scam you. I just, I don’t know. It’s hard to make new friends in your thirties.” She has been trying to get used to being thirty, well before the time comes when she must accept it.
“You’re telling me. Try dating with kids. I can’t even find a babysitter to go get my hair done.”
“I could babysit for you.”
“What do you know about kids?”
“Excuse me?”
“You have any youngsters around you growing up? Do you know how to take care of them? I literally just met you today.”
Marty blushes. She thinks of her own childhood, growing up an only child, lonely even then, making her Barbies kiss each other in her beds, cutting out pictures of bra models from the Sears catalogues and hiding them under her pillow. “Not really, but I could learn.”
Marty looks at Geraldine, really looks at her. She is lean, all muscle and tattoo. She looks like an athlete, tall and bronzed by the sun. Marty is short, chubby, with a round face; she has gained fifteen pounds from the antipsychotics prescribed for her treatment-resistant depression. Sometimes, Marty can’t tell if she is attracted to women because she likes them, or because she wishes she looked and felt like a normal woman.
Geraldine keeps wiping the surfaces in the kitchen that have been exposed to fingerprints and other interventions from small humans. She doesn’t say anything for a few moments. Then she rinses off her crocheted dishcloth and hangs it behind the sink faucet.
“Okay, let’s try it. You come over tomorrow to watch them and I’ll go get a coffee.”
“Thanks,” Marty smiles. “For trusting me.”
“I don’t, but I’ll give you a shot.” Geraldine laughs, taking a couple of shot glasses down out of the cupboard and filling them with tequila she rummages out of a cupboard above the fridge. “Here, have a drink maid.”
Marty swallows the bitter liquid and gags. She never drinks, it interferes with her meds.
Geraldine pours another two shots. They drink them together, cheersing this time.
“How old are you?” Geraldine asks.
“29. You?”
“30. Had my kids young. It’s been really good to grow up with them, actually. Had to get my shit together enough to keep them alive. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them. I get the morbs when I don’t have nothing to do with my hands. You gotta keep moving when there’s little ones. Never a moment to get stuck in your own bullshit.”
This isn’t the first time Marty considers that maybe she should have tried harder to find a real relationship and have children. Now, she has come too far with her depression to risk fucking it up with kids.
“There’s something about childless people, you know? Those DINKs, double income no kids, you know the type. So selfish, like nothing matters except their own suffering,” Geraldine says. “People say there’s no right decisions, only decisions. But there is in fact a right answer for having kids, and it’s do it if you can. You want kids, Marty?”
“No.”
Geraldine shakes her head. “You should maid, you really should. Sometimes I think people would be much better off living in these old fashion villages, you know, the ones where people are suppose to raise each other’s kids. If it wasn’t so hard to get a bit of childcare people like you would have kids, if you didn’t have to be responsible for them all the time.” Geraldine tucks her greying black hair behind her ears, a shaggy mullet type cut, Marty isn’t sure whether or not it had once been a deliberate haircut, or if it is merely the result of neglect.
Marty spins her shot glass around on the counter. She is leaning back on the cheap laminate, moving it against her spine like a massage. The alcohol is starting to have an effect on her. A lightweight on new meds, she imagines herself floating up, sticking to the ceiling like a deflating balloon.
Marty laughs. “I would need to find a partner first. And can I tell you a secret? I just can’t stand the thought of having another man in my house.”
Geraldine smiles. “That makes two of us.”
They stand there, an entire universe of experiential difference hanging between them like Earth and a quasar. On one side, Geraldine has three kids and family drama. On the other side, Marty has a lifetime of experience with clinical depression and what Geraldine has just termed the morbs. They stand there, quietly, looking at each other’s faces. Would it be possible to bridge the gap, to connect the worlds? Marty knows she is thinking simply, drunkenly. But she is thinking clearly, for once. Geraldine is everything that Marty wants to be. She has a sunny disposition, is optimistic and funny. Marty is just a miserable loser who can’t leave her house half the time. Marty has no dependents, no reason to live.
“Geraldine.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I like your name. I like the way it feels in my mouth.”
“I fuckin hates it. But I hate Geri more.”
They both laugh. Then Marty slams her shot glass down and says, simply, “fuck it.”
She reaches over and pulls Geraldine into her body, holding her in a quick, tight embrace. She lets go and reels backwards and bangs her spine off the countertop’s lip. The room spins a bit.
Geraldine stands there for a second, then, charging at Marty, she slams her lips into Marty’s lips and shoves her tongue into Marty’s mouth.
Marty pushes her back against the opposite countertop in the small galley kitchen that Geraldine has made so spotless. She runs her fingers through Geraldine’s hair. She pulls it back into a ponytail while she kisses her.
They are heavy handed with their touch. Geraldine unzips Marty’s jeans and reaches her hand down and cups her vulva like a hamster. Marty is so wet, but is drunk enough not to be embarrassed about it. Geraldine nibbles her ear while she rubs Marty. She lets herself whimper, then, remembering there are kids asleep upstairs, says “shhh” to herself, mostly. Geraldine takes her hand.
On Geraldine’s bed their kissing takes on a slower quality, the experience softer than anything before this moment in Marty’s life. Geraldine’s skin is silk. Slippery and smelling of coconut oil. She knows enough about moms to know they use coconut oil for everything. She imagines Geraldine slathering it onto her baby’s head, rubbing away the cradle cap like a mother cat with a rough tongue.
Marty looks over at a baby monitor on Geraldine’s dresser. She sees a child, squished into the corner of its crib. She imagines the rat chewing its face. Geraldine kisses her ear and she turns toward the softness of her face.
They take off each other’s t-shirts, Geraldine’s crusted with the day’s cream cheese and bagels from the bakery up the street, Marty’s with coffee, and three days of grime that comes with wearing the same outfit because she doesn’t shower when she is depressed. Maybe they have more in common than Marty first thought.
Geraldine moves her hand up and down Marty’s back. Marty is beginning to let herself go, to lean into the trailing fingers like a breadcrumb, when she hears the sound of small feet running. Except it isn’t coming from outside the room, it is coming from under the bed.
Marty sits up. “Did you hear that?”
Geraldine sits still. They both listen.
“Is your kid in the room?” Marty whispers.
Geraldine shakes her head. “No, Gabe is asleep and the other two wouldn’t fit under there.”
The feet scurry. They lock eyes and realize what it is.
It is the rat. And by the volume of the footsteps, a big one. Marty has heard stories from her neighbours about rats the size of cats. It wouldn’t be unusual.
“What do we do?” Marty feels like a child, she needs Geraldine to solve this problem, like the cradle cap, like the dirty kitchen.
Earlier this winter, Marty had found signs of a rodent infestation in her kitchen. She set traps, just in case. But she caught nothing. Even though she hates rats, she sometimes wished one would bite her, make her die quickly from an infectious disease.
Geraldine swings a foot over the side of the bed and lowers herself onto hands and knees. Then she scoots backwards.
“Fuck!”
Marty gathers her limbs around her body in a protective stance. “What is it?”
“It has a trap on its ass!”
“A rat?”
“A huge fucking rat!”
Marty gets down and looks.
The rat is heaving with huge breaths, dying slowly in front of them. Marty recognizes the trap. It is from her house.
“It must have gotten between the walls from my house to yours,” Marty whispers. She feels respect for the rat mangled but somehow still alive. Sticking in her throat like a wad of gum, the threat of tears. “The basement walls are full of crumbling rock that used to be a firewall.”
“What do we do?”
Marty considers the options. She isn’t used to being asked what to do. She could leave, chalk it up to a weird hook-up experience, never talk to Geraldine again. But she feels a strong sense of obligation towards this woman. She wants to protect her.
“You keep an eye on it, make sure it doesn’t get away. I’ll go find some things,” she hears herself say.
Marty runs downstairs, finds a broom. She takes a chef’s knife off a magnetic rail. She locates a junk drawer and finds a roll of duct tape.
Upstairs, she wraps the knife around the broom handle and tapes it on like a spear. Lying on her belly, she has one shot before the rat runs off.
Marty thrusts the knife into the rat, skewering it like a fish.
She pulls the impaled body out. It is definitely dead.
Geraldine bursts into tears. “This is the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever had to deal with on a date.”
“Is this a date?” Marty asks.
“Isn’t that what you wanted when you asked me for a drink?”
Marty blushes. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Geraldine is hurt by that.
“I mean, yes, one hundred percent definitely it was, I’m just really bad at this.”
Geraldine looks at the rat and then at Marty. “I think I like having you around.”
“Do you have any gloves?”
“Just winter gloves. Like, felt ones.”
“Could you get them and a garbage bag? I’ll uh, hold this guy until you get back.”
The way Geraldine looks at her then slices her open like the rat. She can feel the love stretching out in the space between them, elastic and warm.
Marty holds the spear, keeping the rat as still as possible so she doesn’t get blood everywhere. She feels like a bear who caught a salmon for her babies. Marty looks at the monitor and sees the baby roll over, nuzzle his face into the corner of the crib, and go back to sleep.
She settles in and waits for Geraldine to return.