Type in your address, and a website called diedinhouse.com will reveal whether anyone died in your home before you bought it. If that had included anything, I should have logged on before buying 100 Lafayette Ave.
Because I love old houses (such quality, charming character), I’ve been subjected to things that want to live in my old house with me; things that owners of airtight, newer construction probably don’t have to contend with. Things that have subsequently died-in-house—gone into the light, gone to a better place, crossed the rainbow bridge: snakes, wasps, bats, mice, spiders, and one salamander who raced in off the front porch and ran directly into the hall closet to hide behind the vacuum cleaner. (Poor choice. Didn’t end well.)
These are animals you don’t mind outside the house, but that become entirely different creatures inside the house. Worse, these are critters you might tolerate one at a time, but that become horrifying en masse.
Tippi Hedren. Phone booth. If you know, you know.
So, we have given pretty accurate collective names to those animals you only want to see one at a time—like a slither of snakes, a rhumba of rattlesnakes, or a clutter of spiders. And we have more benign collective names too—a dazzle of zebras, a bloat of hippos, and … a mischief of mice.
Last night I was watching TV when, in my peripheral vision, I saw what was unmistakably a mouse race from the kitchen into the hallway, do a U-turn at the baseboard, and race back into the kitchen to disappear under the stove.
This creeped me out for any number of reasons. When I moved into this house 22 years ago, I discovered that a mischief of mice had set up a sleep-away camp under the stove, where they had stowed bits of insulation they had gathered from the walls and started a little mouse fire.
So last night I immediately got out some snap traps (which I buy by the case) and the peanut butter. I don’t want to hurt or kill anything. It actually pains me. It pains Leah-dog, too.
She has an absolute preternatural ability to know when you’re about to squish a mosquito or fly, for instance, and goes berserk. Walk past her with a paper towel, and she’ll come instantly alert from a sound sleep, follow on your heels, throw herself at the window, do anything possible to interfere with your aim.
And last night, the Defender-of-Life-in-All-Forms knew what was going on the minute I got out the mousetraps. I managed to slide them under the stove before she could dismantle them, but in the morning, no joy.
Why am I so afraid, so grossed out by something so small?
Well, for one thing, because it’s so fast. Do you like anything that darts? Scuttles?
Yeah-no.
I could try to desensitize myself. In a famous experiment, psychologist Lloyd Silverman explored the power of words to eliminate phobias by flashing phrases on a screen for just four milliseconds—too brief a time to be read consciously but long enough to be perceived subliminally.
His first experiment was on women with insect phobias. Half the volunteers were shown photos of roaches while being subliminally exposed to the neutral phrase, “People are walking,” and the other half were shown the same photos while subliminally absorbing the phrase, “Mommy and I are one.”
The “Mommy and I are one” group showed a significant reduction in their symptoms, while the other group was unchanged. They felt safe, protected by their oneness with something greater than themselves.
Mommy and I are one … Mommy and I are one …
Yeah, no. Still creeped out.
So again, how come one two-ounce creature that eats crumbs has turned Lafayette Ave. into Cape Fear?
Because he has breached my defenses, the one place where I’m supposed to have some control. Instead, I’m afraid to walk past the stove. I’m afraid something soft and gray is going to dart out from under the stove and race over my foot.
Up my leg!!
To walk past the stove is like that feeling from childhood that something scary is hiding under the bed. It’s the discovery of the daddy long legs that got into my pajama top while I was camping. Something is where it doesn’t belong.
I’m seven years old again, desperate for a guarantee that if I lock the doors, bad things can’t get in; that if I try hard enough, I can protect those I love. Mommy and I are one is a prayer, a story. Words that promise we are not in this alone.
Leah is sleeping. A small black-and-white pile of paws and plume of a tail curled up on the sofa like a croissant. She doesn’t know the mouse has just gone into the light.
When she wakes, she’ll resume trying to protect the world, as will I, story by story.
Neither of us can, and yet I do know this: we are never alone.
In the beginning was the Word.
And in the end, when words fail us, love will speak for itself.
