Murphy & Mousetrap (4 page)

Murphy thought of climbing up to the windows to make sure they were closed every time he left the room. Poor Mousetrap, closed up in such a tiny place.

“What's number six?” Murphy asked.

“Number six.” Mom's face broke into a huge smile. “Grandma cooks all the time. Not the kind of food you're used to. She cooks duck soup, smoked fish, deer stew, clam chowder, fish eggs, stuff like that. The house always smells like something's cooking. And most of the food comes from the ocean.”

Clam chowder didn't taste bad. Salmon and halibut were yummy. But Murphy had seen fish eggs, and he had smelled duck soup and smoked fish. Just the thought of them made the back of his throat stick together.

“I don't like duck soup,” he told Mom. “Or smoked fish.”

“You'll learn to like it,” Mom said without looking his way. “It was the only food we ate when we were kids—along with potatoes, carrots and onions.”

Murphy and Mom stared out the window as they turned the corner near the apartment. The six things weren't bad, but Murphy could tell even Mom wasn't excited about all of them.

“There's more than six things,” she said. She parked the car and jumped out. “There's a lot more than six things, but that's enough for tonight.”

The apartment didn't feel like home when they opened the door. Grandma's basement didn't feel like home either. When Murphy crawled into bed beside Mousetrap he didn't feel like he had a home. That night Murphy dreamed he pulled a drowning cat out of a mucky puddle. The cat shivered and gasped for breath. Murphy wrapped the cat in his jacket and brought him home. He washed the cat with warm water, and as the brown mud swirled down the sink Murphy realized the cat was Mousetrap.

6

The next week flew by. The last weekend in January came too soon. Early Sunday morning Murphy woke up to find Mousetrap standing on the pillow next to his head. Thumps and bangs and groans came from outside his bedroom door. He pulled Mousetrap into his bed and wrapped the sheets over his head.

“I don't want to go,” Murphy whispered to his cat.

“Come on, Murphy,” Mom called. “Time to get up and out of there.”

Bernie opened his bedroom door. “Your mom says your bed is next,” she said.

As soon as Murphy got out of bed, Mom folded his sheets, and Chas and Bernie carried his mattress out of the apartment and lifted it into the back of their pickup truck.

Murphy got dressed and walked into the living room. There were stains on the carpet where the sofa had been. Dirty shadows framed where pictures once hung. Murphy didn't like how the apartment felt, dirty and bleak.

Mom called from the front door, “Bring your pajamas and let's go.”

“Coming.”

He glanced once more in his bedroom. He wouldn't have a bedroom after this. He peered into the bathroom and looked at the bathtub. There was no bathtub at Grandma's either. When he turned and looked into the kitchen he felt Mom's arm on his shoulder.

“We're going to miss this place, aren't we Murphy?” Mom said.

Murphy rubbed the back of his hand against his nose. His eyes stung. He picked up Mousetrap and wrapped his arms around
his cat. Mom wrapped her arms around both of them. Murphy could feel Mom's tears, wet on the back of his neck.

“It's going to be okay, Murphy,” she said.

The drive to Grandma's took forever even though Mom put on Murphy's favorite tape and they sang at the top of their lungs. Mousetrap sat on Murphy's lap curled in a blanket. He closed his eyes and didn't open them until Mom stopped the car and said, “We're home.”

While Bernie and Chas unloaded the pickup, Albert, Jeff and Danny tapped a soccer ball from foot to foot.

“Sure got a lot of stuff,” Albert said to Mom as she lugged furniture inside.

“You sure you gonna fit all that stuff in the basement?” Danny asked.

The unloading was almost finished when Mom said, “You boys gonna stand there or help?”

They helped Bernie with the mattresses and then disappeared.

Once the furniture was piled in the middle of the room there was barely space to move.
Murphy uncovered a chair and held on tightly to Mousetrap until Mom said goodbye to her friends and closed the door.

“Leave Mousetrap with me, Murphy,” she said. “You go outside and find the boys. I have work to do.”

“I'll help,” Murphy offered.

“Thanks,” she said, “but no. I need to organize.”

What help would he be? But what would he do outside with the boys? And what about Mousetrap? What would Mousetrap do without Murphy?

“I said: Go outside,” Mom repeated. “You need to play.”

Murphy placed Mousetrap on the chair, checked the windows to make sure they were closed and shut the door securely behind him. He sighed with relief. The boys were nowhere in sight. Murphy headed down the sandy path to the beach. Salt air nipped his cheeks. The blustery wind drowned out everything but the sound of waves crashing against the shore. The beach was strewn with gray weather-beaten logs and instead of
sand it was covered in small stones of every color. He crouched and sifted the smooth stones through his fingers: green, orange, black, gray, clear white. He even found pink stones the color of Mom's bedspread.

Murphy picked up soft pieces of shell and glass with round edges. There were so many beautiful things. How would he ever decide what to save and what to send back to the beach? First he stuffed a pink stone in his pocket. Next a green stone, then a black stone and a white stone. Soon he realized that every stone looked special, and he began to look at them more closely. He found green stones with orange flecks, pink stones with black veins, motley black and white stones.

He began to separate the stones by color. Pink stones in one line, green stones in the next. At first Murphy was bothered by the rain, but soon he noticed how shiny the stones looked when splashed with raindrops. He rubbed the wet stones between his fingers and watched bright colors emerge.

Murphy heard feet scuffing along the beach. He kept his head down and kept examining
the stones. The sound got louder. Soon Murphy could hear at least three, maybe four, sets of feet. When Murphy looked up with a bright pink stone clutched in his hand, Albert plunked his big wet sneaker right in the middle of Murphy's neatly placed lines of stones. Stones flew off the log. Those that remained were shuffled into several multicolored piles.

A lump formed in Murphy's stomach as if he had swallowed armfuls of stones. His arms fell loosely next to his body, which felt limp like a wet dishcloth. His knees grew watery and wobbly.

“You gonna line up all the stones on the beach?” Albert asked.

Murphy's body wouldn't move. Even if he could think of something to say, there would be no sound to his words. His throat had closed up so tight he could barely breathe. Murphy didn't look up. He watched Albert's feet as he kicked the rest of the stones off the log.

“Maybe you're gonna take all the rocks home in your pocket and line them up for your Mommy,” Albert's voice cut through Murphy's stomach, making him have to pee. Bad.

He wished he could look up at Albert and the other boys and say something smart and tough, but his neck bent down deep, and he stared at the beach. He forced himself to stand and lifted his eyes just in time to see Albert fire the soccer ball directly at him. Without thought, Murphy lifted his hands and stopped the ball as it landed hard into his chest. He tried to hold on, but the ball was wet and slippery and fell onto the beach. Pain shot through his lungs and his breathing got mixed up so he had to gasp to get the air down.

“Nice save,” Albert said.

7

He wiped his hands across his chest, but it didn't help. The ball had left a dirty splash of mud on the front of his jacket.

What would Mom say?

“You better go home,” Albert said. “I can hear your mommy calling you.”

Murphy listened for Mom, but all he could hear was the sound of the waves and a humming in his ears. So he wouldn't make matters worse, Murphy ran up the path and straight home hoping to make it in time to pee.

He hurried through the clutter in the basement and into the apartment.

“Have a good time?” Mom asked.

“Yeah, okay,” he replied.

“Are you sure everything's all right?”

“Yeah,” Murphy said emerging from the makeshift bathroom. “Want some help?”

Mousetrap leaped from behind a stack of boxes into his arms. Murphy buried his chilly hands in Mousetrap's warm silky hair.

“I don't think Mousetrap will like the cats outside,” Murphy said. “They look mean and hungry.”

“I don't think they're mean,” she said. “But we'll keep him in the room.”

Murphy wasn't convinced that Mom was really thinking about Mousetrap. She was busy planning and organizing. Murphy thought it would be up to him to make sure Mousetrap was fine.

“Do you like it so far?” Mom asked.

The beds were against the wall near the bathroom. Mom had nailed blankets to the ceiling to make walls to make a little room for Murphy and to separate his bed from hers. It looked like pictures Murphy had seen of Arabian tents.

“I like it,” he said. And he did. He pulled the blanket back. It was a little dark around his bed, but it was warm and safe. He put on sheets and his comforter. He covered his pillows and fluffed them up on his bed. Then he found Mousetrap's velvet pillow, overturned a cardboard box and placed his cat's bed on top.

“This is home, Mousetrap,” he said.

He unpacked his stone collection and made space for the brightly colored stones he planned on bringing home from the beach. For a moment, it felt like he was home.

Mom and Murphy left together in the morning, Mom to her new job, Murphy to his new school. In the evening, Mom worked at setting things in order. By the end of the week, the room looked almost like an apartment but without a bathtub or a kitchen.

Mom bought a small fridge, a microwave and a hot plate. She set up the kitchen table, and they sat at the table and ate supper just like they used to.

Mom plugged in a lamp beside Murphy's bed so he could read at night. She set up the computer on a table just outside his blanket door. She laid rugs on the floor and squished plants into spots that were barely big enough.

“It looks like home, don't you think?” she said.

After she hung Murphy's kindergarten paintings on the walls and covered the back of the door with the pictures that used to hang on the fridge, he had to agree. It was beginning to look like home.

But it wasn't just like home. Murphy and Mousetrap didn't play hide-and-seek after school. One reason was he didn't have a key for the door; Mom just left it unlocked. The other reason was there weren't many places to hide in the new place. Other than the beds, the toilet and the shower, which were hidden behind blankets, you could see everything in the apartment by standing in one place.

On Saturday morning, Mom and Murphy were eating their cereal when there was a loud knock at the door.