Vinegar Girl

Chapter Eleven

In order to get into Pyotr’s car, Kate had to enter from the driver’s side and struggle past the stick shift to the passenger’s side. This was because the passenger-side door seemed to have been caved in by something, and it no longer opened. She didn’t ask what had happened. It was pretty clear that Pyotr had been driving even more distractedly than usual.

She put her tote on the floor among an assortment of discarded flyers, and then she fumbled beneath her for whatever the lump was that she was sitting on. It turned out to be Pyotr’s cell phone. Once he was settled behind the wheel, she held it toward him and asked, “Were you texting while driving?” He didn’t respond; just grabbed it away from her and stuffed it into the right front pocket of his shorts. Then he twisted the key in the ignition, and the engine roared to life with a grinding sound.

Before he could back out of his parking space, though, Dr. Battista rapped his knuckles on Pyotr’s side window. Pyotr cranked the window down and barked, “What!”

“I’m dropping Bunny off at home and then I’m going straight to the lab,” Dr. Battista told him. “I’ll talk to the police after I check things out. See you two at the reception, I guess.”

Pyotr merely nodded and shifted violently into reverse.

Barreling down the Jones Falls Expressway, he seemed to feel the need to relive every last second of the tragedy. “I stand there; I think, ‘What am I seeing?’ I think, ‘I will just blink my eyes and then everything will be normal.’ So I blink, but racks are still empty. No cages. Writing on wall looks shouting, looks loud. But room is very, very still; has no motion. You know that mice are always moving. They rustle and they squeak; they hurry to the front when they hear anybody coming; they find humans…promising. Now, nothing. Stillness. Four, five cedar chips on bare floor.”

His window was still open and the wind was whipping her hair into snarls, but Kate decided not to mention it.

“I am so not wanting to believe it that I turn and walk into other room. As if mice just maybe took themselves elsewhere. I say, ‘Khello?’ I don’t know why I say, ‘Khello?’ Is not as if they could answer.”

“You want to veer left at this fork,” Kate said, because they were traveling so fast that it seemed he might not be planning to do that. At the last second he swerved violently, throwing her against her door, and shortly afterward he took a speedy right onto North Charles Street without checking for traffic. (He certainly felt no hesitation about merging.) “I never trusted that Bunny, right from start,” he told Kate. “So baby-acting. Is like what they say in my country about—”

“Bunny didn’t do this,” Kate told him. “She doesn’t have the nerve.”

“Of course she did it. I told police she did it.”

“You what?”

“Detective wrote her name down in notebook.”

“Oh, Pyotr!”

“She knows combination of lock, and she is vegetable eater,” Pyotr said.

“Lots of people are vegetarians, but that doesn’t make them burglars,” Kate said. She braced her feet against the floor; they were approaching an amber light. “Besides, she’s not really a vegetarian; she just says she is.”

Pyotr sped up even faster and sailed through the light. “She is a vegetarian,” he said. “She made you take the meat from the mush-dish.”

“Yes, but then she keeps stealing my beef jerky.”

“She is stealing your beef jerky?”

“I have to change my hiding place every couple of days because she’s always swiping it. She’s no more vegetarian than I am! It’s just one of those phases, one of those teenage fads. You have to tell the police she didn’t do it, Pyotr. Tell them you made a mistake.”

“Anyway,” Pyotr said gloomily, “what is the difference who did it? Mice are vanished. All that care we took for them; now they are scampering the streets of Baltimore.”

“You really think animal lovers would turn a bunch of cage-reared mice loose in city traffic? They do have some common sense. Those mice are stashed away someplace safe and protected, with all their antibodies or whatever perfectly intact.”

“Please do not contradict me,” Pyotr said.

Kate rolled her eyes at the ceiling, and neither one of them spoke again.

Dr. Battista’s plan had been for Kate to start wearing her mother’s wedding ring after the ceremony, and she had brought it with her to the church. But it had not been mentioned during the vows — a sign, perhaps, that Uncle Theron was more flustered by the general tumult than he had let on — and so now she bent and drew her billfold from her tote and took the ring out of the coin compartment. The wedding ring was yellow gold and her engagement ring was white gold, but her father had told her that was perfectly acceptable. She slipped it onto her finger and returned her billfold to her tote.

They zipped down North Charles, somehow managing to hit every intersection just as the traffic light was turning red. Pyotr never once stopped. They whizzed past cherry trees and Bradford pear trees in full bloom, each with a puddle of pink or white petals on the ground underneath. When they reached the construction mess around the Johns Hopkins campus, Pyotr took a snappy turn off Charles without bothering to signal, nearly mowing down a crowd of young people carrying picnic baskets. It was almost one o’clock now, and the whole world seemed to be heading out for lunch — everyone laughing, calling to friends, strolling aimlessly with no sense of urgency. Pyotr cursed under his breath and cranked his window shut.

In front of Mrs. Murphy’s house, Pyotr scraped his tires alongside the curb and cut the engine. He opened his door and got out and nearly shut it on Kate’s ankles, because she was in the act of sliding past the stick shift and across the driver’s seat. “Watch it!” she told him. At least he had the grace then to stand back and wait for her to emerge, but he still didn’t speak, and he closed the door with unnecessary firmness once she was out.

They smushed a layer of pale pink blossoms carpeting the sidewalk. They climbed the three brick steps and came to a stop on the stoop. Pyotr slapped his front pockets. Then he slapped his rear pockets. Then he said, “Hell damn,” and put his finger on the doorbell and held it there.

It seemed at first that no one would answer. Finally, though, a creaking sound came from inside, and then Mrs. Liu flung the door open and demanded, “Why you ring?”

She was wearing what appeared to be the same clothes she had worn when Kate first met her, but she was no longer all smiles. Without giving Kate so much as a glance, she scowled fiercely at Pyotr and said, “Mrs. Murphy having her nap.”

“I don’t want Mrs. Murphy; I want to get into house!” Pyotr shouted.

“You have key to get into house!”

“I locked key in car!”

“Again? You do this again?”

“Do not quack at me! You are very rude!” And Pyotr shoved his way past her and strode directly to the staircase.

“Sorry,” Kate told Mrs. Liu. “We didn’t mean to disturb you. Monday I’m getting an extra key made, so this shouldn’t happen again.”

“He is the one is very rude,” Mrs. Liu said.

“He’s had a really hard day.”

“He has many hard days,” Mrs. Liu said. But she stepped back, finally, and let Kate enter the house. Belatedly, she asked, “You got married?”

“Right.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Kate said.

She hoped Mrs. Liu wasn’t feeling sorry for her. Before, she had acted so fond of Pyotr, but now it seemed they disliked each other.

Pyotr had reached the second flight of stairs before she caught up with him. She bypassed him and started toward the room that was going to be hers, where she planned to deposit her tote. Behind her, Pyotr said, “Where my extra keys are?”

She paused and turned. He had stopped on the landing, and he was gazing all around him. Since the landing was entirely bare, without a stick of furniture or a picture or so much as a hook on the wall, it seemed an unlikely place to look for his keys, but there he stood, wearing a baffled expression.

She censored the first response that came to her, which was “How should I know where your extra keys are?” She set her tote on the floor and asked, “Where do you keep them?”

“In kitchen drawer,” he said.

“Let’s look in the kitchen drawer, then, why don’t we,” she said. She spoke more slowly and evenly than usual, so that she wouldn’t come across as exasperated.

She led the way to the kitchen and began opening the cranky white metal drawers beneath the counter: one drawer containing dime-store knives and forks and spoons, one containing an assortment of cooking utensils, one containing dishcloths. She returned to the utensil drawer. That seemed to have the most possibilities, even if it wasn’t where she herself would have kept keys. She rattled through several spatulas, a whisk, a hand-cranked eggbeater…Pyotr stood watching with his arms hanging limp, offering no help.

“Here you go,” she said finally, and she held up an aluminum shower-curtain ring bearing a house key and a Volkswagen key.

Pyotr said, “Ah!” and lunged for them, but she took a step back and hid the keys behind her.

“First you have to call the police,” she said, “and tell them you made a mistake about Bunny. Then you get the keys.”

“What?” he said. “No. Hand me keys, Katherine. I am husband and I say hand me keys.”

“I am wife and I say no,” she said.

She supposed he could have wrested them from her. She fancied she saw the thought cross his face. But in the end he said, “I will only tell police Bunny is maybe not vegetarian. Okay?”

“Tell them she didn’t take the mice.”

“I will tell them you think she didn’t take the mice.”

Kate decided that was the best she could hope for. “Do it, then,” she said.

He took his cell phone from the right front pocket of his shorts. Then he took his billfold from his back pocket. He pulled out a business card. “Detective assigned to my case, personally,” he said with some pride. He held the card up for her to read. “How you pronounce this name?”

She peered at it. “McEnroe,” she said.

“McEnroe.” He clicked his phone on, studied the screen a moment, and then began the laborious process of placing a call.

Even from where she stood, she could hear the single ring, followed immediately by a male voice making a canned announcement. “He must have turned his phone off,” she told Pyotr. “Leave a message.”

Pyotr lowered his phone and gaped at her. “He turned it off?” he asked.

“That’s why his voice mail picked up so fast. Leave a message.”

“But he said I call him night or day. He said this was his personal number.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” she said. She snatched the phone away from him and pressed it to her ear. “Detective McEnroe, this is Kate Battista,” she said. “I’m calling for Pyotr Shcherbakov; the laboratory break-in case. He told you that my sister, Bunny, could be a possible suspect, but that’s because he was thinking Bunny’s a vegetarian, and she’s not. She eats meat. Also she was home all last evening and I’m sure I would have known if she had gone out during the night, so you can take her off your list. Thanks. Bye.”

She ended the call and returned the phone to Pyotr. It was anyone’s guess whether she had spoken in time to be recorded.

Pyotr put the phone in his pocket. He said, “Detective told me, ‘Here’s my card.’ He told me, ‘You should call me any time, if you have any further thoughts.’ And now he does not answer. Is final straw; is last straw. This is worst day of my life.”

Kate knew it was unreasonable of her, but she couldn’t help feeling insulted.

She gave up the keys in silence.

“Thank you,” he said absently. Then he said, “Well, thank you”—the unaccustomed “well” slightly softening his tone. He passed a hand over his face. He looked drawn and weary, and suddenly older than his age.

“I have not told you this,” he said, “but the three years I have been here have been difficult years. Lonesome years. Perplexing. Everyone acts that to be in America is a gift, but is not one hundred percent a gift. Americans say things that are misleading. They seem so friendly; they use first names from beginning. They seem so casual and informal. Then they turn off their phones. I do not understand them!”

He and Kate were facing each other, no more than a foot apart. She was close enough to see the microscopic blond glints of his whiskers, and the tiny brown specks mixed in with the blue of his eyes.

“It is the language, maybe?” he asked. “I know the vocabulary, but still I am not capable to work the language the way I want to. There is no special word for ‘you’ when it is you that I am speaking to. In English there is only one ‘you,’ and I have to say the same ‘you’ to you that I would say to a stranger; I cannot express my closeness. I am homesick in this country, but I am thinking I would be homesick in my own country now, also. I have no longer any home to go back to — no relatives, no position, and my friends have lived three years without me. There is no place for me. So I have to pretend I am fine here. I have to pretend everything is…how you say? Hunky-dory.”

Kate was reminded of her father’s confession weeks earlier, when he was telling her what a long haul it had been. Men were just subject to this belief that they should keep their miseries buried deep inside, it seemed, as if admitting to them would be shameful. She reached out and touched Pyotr’s arm, but he gave no sign he had noticed. “I bet you didn’t even have breakfast,” she told him. It was all she could think of to say. “That’s what it is! You’re starving. I’m going to fix you something.”

“I don’t want it,” he said.

In the church she had been thinking that maybe the reason he went ahead with the wedding regardless was that underneath, he…well, liked her, a little. But now he wasn’t even looking at her; he didn’t seem to care that she was standing there so close to him with her hand on his arm. “I just want mice back,” he said.

Kate dropped her hand.

“I would like that the thief would be Bunny,” he said. “Then she could tell us where are they.”

Kate said, “Believe me, Pyotr, it wasn’t Bunny. Bunny’s nothing but a copycat! She just has this little semi-crush or whatever it is on Edward Mintz and so when Edward said he was vegan…”

She paused. Pyotr was still not looking at her or even hearing her, probably. “Oh,” she said. “It was Edward.”

Then he did flick his eyes in her direction.

“Edward knows where the lab is,” she said. “He went to the lab with Bunny, that time she brought Father his lunch. He must have been standing right beside her when she punched in the lock combination.”

Pyotr had been holding the keys in his left hand, and now he gave them a sudden toss upward, caught them again, and walked out of the kitchen.

Kate said, “Pyotr?”

By the time she reached the landing, he was halfway down the first flight of stairs. “Where are you going?” she called over the railing. “Just wait till you’ve finished lunch and then call the detective, why don’t you. What do you think you’re doing? Can I come with you?”

But all she heard was the slapping sound of his flip-flops descending the stairs.

She should make him take her with him. She should run after him and fling herself into the car. It was hurt feelings, probably, that stopped her. Ever since the wedding he had been downright abusive, as if now that they were married he thought he could treat her however he liked. He hadn’t even noticed how helpful she had been about his stupid keys, or how she had offered so nicely to fix him something to eat.

She turned from the stairs and continued down the hall to the living room. She went over to one of the windows and peered at the street below. The VW was already pulling away from the curb.

—

In movies, women were always flinging together elegant, impromptu meals from odds and ends in the fridge, but Kate didn’t see how she could do that with what was in Pyotr’s fridge. All it held was a jar of mayonnaise, a few cans of beer, a carton of eggs, and some very pale celery. Also a screwed-up bag from McDonald’s, which she didn’t bother investigating. The fruit bowl on the counter displayed a single speckled banana. “Miracle food,” she could hear Pyotr saying, which seemed at odds with his fondness for McDonald’s and KFC. When she looked through the cupboards above the counter she found rows and rows of empty containers — bottles and jars and jugs meticulously washed and saved. You would think he planned to take up canning.

Her only option was scrambled eggs, she figured, but then she realized he didn’t even have butter. Could you make scrambled eggs with no butter? She wasn’t going to risk it. Maybe deviled, then. At least he had mayonnaise. She put four eggs in the dented saucepan she found in the drawer beneath the stove, and she covered them with water and set them to boil.

She hoped he wasn’t doing anything foolish. He should have just called the police. But maybe that was where he was going, down to the station in person, or maybe to the lab to reconnoiter with her father.

She went back to the living room and looked out the window again, for no earthly reason.

The living room seemed less empty now that Pyotr had moved his desk in from the study. It was heaped with various belongings that must also have been in the study — junk mail and stacks of books and coiled extension cords, in addition to the computer equipment. She picked up a wall calendar, curious to know if he’d made a note of their wedding, but the page was still turned to February and all the days were blank. She put it back on the desk.

She returned to the landing for her tote and carried it to her room. The leopard-print slipcover had vanished; the daybed had been stripped to its rust-stained navy-and-white-striped mattress, and there was no sign of sheets or blankets. A naked pillow slumped on the floor next to it. Couldn’t he at least have put fresh linens on — tried to make it more welcoming? Her garment bag hung in the closet and her carton of shower gifts sat on the bureau, but she couldn’t imagine ever feeling she belonged here.

The air in this room had an atticky smell, and she walked over to the window and struggled to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. Finally she gave up and went back out to the kitchen. She looked to see if the eggs were done, but how was she supposed to tell? At home she had relied on a plastic color-changing gadget dating back to Mrs. Larkin. So she let the eggs cook a few minutes longer while she spooned mayonnaise into a plastic mixing bowl and sprinkled in salt and pepper from the two shakers on the table. Then she resumed her inventory, looking into all the under-counter cabinets, but they were nearly empty. After lunch, she would have to unpack the kitchen items from her box of shower gifts. The thought lifted her spirits somewhat. A project! She knew just where she would store her green mugs.

She turned off the burner beneath the eggs and carried the pan to the sink and ran cold water over them until they were cool enough to handle. When she started peeling the first one she could tell by the feel of the white that it was cooked enough, but as luck would have it, the shell came off in tiny, sharp, stubborn chips, bringing chunks of white along with them. The egg ended up about half its original size, pockmarked and ugly, and the tips of her fingers were bleeding. She said, “Damn,” and rinsed the egg under the faucet and held it up, considering.

All right, egg salad, then.

This turned out to be a wise decision, because the other three eggs looked equally deformed after she had peeled them. She chopped them with a very dull knife and then she chopped some celery, using the counter as her work surface because she couldn’t find a cutting board. Most of the celery had to be stripped off and thrown into the bucket under the sink. Even the innermost stalks were slightly flabby.

She thought of the salad bowl she’d been given at her shower, and she went back to her room to get it. Packed inside the bowl was her dream catcher. She took it out and held it up and pivoted slowly in the center of the room, debating where to hang it. Ideally, she supposed, it should be suspended from the ceiling directly over her bed, but that seemed like a lot of work and she wasn’t sure that Pyotr owned a hammer and nails. She looked toward the window. It had only a yellowed paper shade, but there must have been curtains at some point because an adjustable metal rod was stretched between brackets above it. She put the dream catcher down and dragged the ottoman over from in front of the armchair in the corner. Then she took off her shoes and stood on the ottoman and tied the dream catcher to the curtain rod.

She wondered if Pyotr had ever seen one of these. He would probably find it peculiar. Well, it was peculiar. He would fold his arms and tilt his head and study it for a long, silent moment. Things always seemed to interest him so. He always seemed to be watching her with such close attention — at least until today. She wasn’t accustomed to attention, but she couldn’t say she found it unpleasant.

She hopped off the ottoman and dragged it back to the armchair and put her shoes on again.

Could the police have had him come with them to Edward’s house to make the arrest, possibly?

It was almost 2:30. The so-called wedding banquet was scheduled for 5:00. This meant there was plenty of time yet, but on the other hand, Aunt Thelma’s house was way out in horse country and Pyotr would need to wash up and change clothes before he went. And Kate was all too familiar with how people in labs could forget to look at the clock.

Maybe he had to fill something out, a warrant or an affidavit or whatever they called it.

She unpacked the rest of her shower gifts and found places for them in the kitchen. She emptied her suitcases into her bureau drawers, helter-skelter at first, but then, feeling time hanging heavy, she rearranged everything in orderly stacks. She unpacked the items from her tote — her brush and comb, which she set on her bureau; her toothbrush, which she took to the bathroom. It seemed too intimate, somehow, to fit her toothbrush into the holder alongside Pyotr’s, so she went to the kitchen for a jelly glass and she stood her toothbrush in that and set it on the bathroom windowsill. There was no medicine cabinet, but a narrow wooden shelf above the sink held shaving supplies, a comb, and a tube of toothpaste. Would they be sharing this toothpaste? Should she have brought her own? How, exactly, were they going to divide the household expenses?

There were so many logistics they hadn’t thought to discuss.

Next to the shower stall, a used-looking towel and washcloth hung on a chrome rod, and on another rod next to the toilet were another towel and washcloth, brand new. Those must be meant for her. The sight partly assuaged the injury of the bare mattress in her bedroom.

It was after 3:00 now. She took her phone from her tote and checked it, just in case she’d somehow missed his call, but there were no messages. She put the phone back. She would just go ahead and eat on her own. All at once she was hungry.

In the kitchen she scooped a bit of egg salad onto a chipped white plate. She got herself a fork and a paper towel, since she couldn’t find any napkins, and she settled herself at the table. But when she looked down at her lunch she caught sight of a fleck of bright red on a piece of yolk: her own blood. She spotted another fleck, and another. In fact, her egg salad as a whole looked effortful and not quite clean — overhandled. She stood up and scraped her serving into the garbage bucket, and she added the rest of the egg salad from the bowl and then concealed the whole mess beneath the paper towel. The kitchen had no dishwasher, so she rinsed her dishes under the tap and dried them with another paper towel and put them away. Destroying the evidence.

It occurred to her that life in the coed dorm had been a lot more fun than this. Also (looking down at her left hand) that white gold and yellow gold really didn’t go together. What had she been thinking, listening to her father on matters of fashion? In fact, people shouldn’t wear rings at all if their nails were short and ragged and rimmed with garden soil.

From the fridge she took a beer, and she opened it and tossed back a good portion of it before she went out to the landing again, still carrying the can. She wandered toward Pyotr’s room. His door was shut, but what the hell; she turned the knob and walked in.

The room was sparsely furnished, like the rest of the apartment, and very neat. The only thing out of place was the ironing board that had been set up at the room’s center, with an iron standing on top of it and a crisp white dress shirt draped over its narrower end. This had the same effect on her as the new towel and washcloth. She felt more hopeful.

The double bed beneath the window was covered with a red satin quilt stitched with fraying gold thread, like something in a cheap motel, and a reading lamp was clamped precariously to the headboard. On the nightstand was a bottle of aspirin and a gilt-framed photo of Kate. Of Kate? She picked it up. Oh, of Kate and Pyotr, except that since Kate’s stool was higher than Pyotr’s chair she filled more of the scene. The startled expression she wore wrinkled her forehead unbecomingly, and the T-shirt beneath her buckskin jacket was streaked with dirt. It was not a picture to be proud of. All that distinguished it from the others her father had snapped — some at least marginally more flattering — was that it was the very first one, the one he’d taken on the day that she and Pyotr had met.

She thought about that a moment and then set the picture back down on the nightstand.

The bureau was topped with a dusty cutwork dresser scarf, probably Mrs. Liu’s contribution, and a saucer that contained a few coins and a single safety pin. Nothing else. The walnut-framed mirror above it was so old that Kate seemed to be looking at herself through gauze — her face suddenly pale and her cloud of black hair almost gray. She took another swig of beer and opened a drawer.

It was her superstitious belief that people who snooped in other people’s private spaces were punished with hurtful discoveries, but Pyotr’s drawers revealed just a paltry collection of clothing, carefully folded and stacked. There were two long-sleeved jerseys she had seen a dozen times, two short-sleeved polo shirts, a small pile of socks rolled in pairs (all ribbed white athletic socks except for one pair of navy dress socks), several pairs of white knit underpants like the ones the little boys in Room 4 wore, and several foreign-looking, tissue-thin undershirts with uncommonly close-set straps. No pajamas. No accessories, no doodads, no frivolities. The only thing she learned about him was the touching meagerness of his life. The meagerness and the…rectitude, was the word that came to her mind.

In his closet she found the suit he must have been planning to wear to the wedding — a shiny navy — along with two pairs of jeans, one still threaded with a belt. A vivid purple tie splashed with yellow lightning bolts was looped over the rod, and his brown Oxfords sat on the floor beside his sneakers.

Kate took another swig of beer and left the room.

Back in the kitchen, she polished off her beer and tossed the can into the paper bag that Pyotr appeared to be using for recycling. She got another beer from the fridge and returned to her own room.

She went directly to her closet and unzipped the garment bag and lifted out the dress she planned to wear to Aunt Thelma’s. It was the one piece of clothing she owned that seemed suitable for a party — red cotton with a scoop neck. She hung it from the hook on the closet door and stepped back to assess it. Should she give it a touch-up with Pyotr’s iron? That seemed like a lot of work, though. She took a meditative sip of beer and gave up on the idea.

The walls here in her bedroom were as bare as the others. She had never realized how bleak a place looked without pictures. For a few minutes, she entertained herself by contemplating what she might hang. Some things from her room at home, maybe? But those were so outdated — faded posters featuring rock groups she no longer listened to, and team photos from her basketball days. She should find something new. Start fresh.

But this time, the thought of a project failed to perk her up. She was feeling very tired, all at once. It might have been the beer, or it might have been because she had slept poorly the night before, but she wished she could take a nap. If there had been sheets on the bed, she would have taken a nap. As it was, she sat down in the armchair in the corner, and she kicked her shoes off and stretched her legs out on the ottoman. Even through the closed window, she could hear birds singing. She focused on those. “Terwhilliker, whilliker, whilliker!” they seemed to be saying. Gradually, her eyelids grew heavy. She set her beer can down on the floor and let herself drift into sleep.

—

Footsteps coming up the stairs, slap-slap-slap. “Khello?” Footsteps across the landing. “Where are you?” Pyotr called. A giant peony bush arrived in her doorway, with Pyotr somewhere behind it. “Oh. You are resting,” he said.

She couldn’t see his face because it was hidden by the bush, which stood in a green plastic nursery pot and already had some buds on it. White, they were going to be. She sat up straighter. She felt a little muzzy. It had been a mistake to drink beer in the daytime.

“What happened?” she asked him.

Instead of answering, he said, “Why you didn’t rest on your bed?” Then he slapped the side of his head, nearly losing control of the peony bush. “The sheets,” he said. “I bought new sheets, and new sheets have toxic chemicals perhaps, so I washed them. They are down in Mrs. Murphy’s dryer.”

This was absurdly heartening to hear. Kate reached for her shoes and slipped them on. “Did you tell the police?” she asked.

“Tell them what?” he said, infuriatingly. He was setting the peony bush on the floor, standing back to dust his hands off. “Oh,” he said in a nonchalant tone. “Mice are back.”

“They’re…back?”

“After you say it is Eddie,” he said, “I think, ‘Yes. Makes sense. It is Eddie.’ So I get in my car and I drive to his house and I pound on his door. ‘Where my mice are?’ I ask him. ‘What mice?’ he says. False surprised look, I can see right away. ‘Just tell me you didn’t loosen them in the streets,’ I say. ‘In the streets!’ he says. ‘Do you really think I’d be that cruel?’ ‘Tell me they are caged,’ I say, ‘wherever they are. Tell me you did not expose them to any common, downtown mice.’ He gets pouty dark look on his face. ‘They’re safe in my room,’ he says. His mother is shouting at me, but I do not pay heed. ‘I’m calling the police!’ she is shouting, but I run straight upstairs and find out which is his room. Mice are still in cages, stacked high.”

“Whoa,” Kate said.

“This is why I am gone so long. Making Eddie move mice back to lab. Your father was in lab. He hugged me! He had tears behind his glasses! Then Eddie became arrested, but your father is not, how they say? Pushing charges.”

“Really!” Kate said. “Why not?”

Pyotr shrugged. “Long story,” he said. “We decided after detective came. Detective answered his phone, this time! Very nice man. Lovely man. Plant is from Mrs. Liu.”

“What?” Kate said. She was feeling as if she’d been spun in circles with a blindfold on.

“She asked that I carry it to you. Wedding present. Something for backyard.”

“So she’s okay now?” Kate asked.

“Okay?”

“She was in such a temper.”

“Oh, yes, she is always talking mean when I lose my keys,” he said blithely. He walked over to the window and lifted the sash with no apparent effort. “Ah!” he said. “Is lovely outside! Are we not late?”

“Excuse me?”

“Was reception not at five?”

Kate glanced at her watch: 5:20. “Oh, God,” she said, and she leapt to her feet.

“Come! We drive fast. You can phone your aunt from car.”

“But I’m not changed. You’re not changed.”

“We go as we are; it is family.”

Kate spread her arms to reveal the wrinkles across the front of her dress from her nap, and the mayonnaise stain near her hem. “Just give me half a second, okay?” she said. “This dress is a disaster.”

“Is a beautiful dress,” he said.

She looked down at it and then dropped her arms. “Fine, it’s a beautiful dress,” she said. “Have it your way.”

But he was already out on the landing now, heading toward the stairs, and she had to run to catch up with him.