A Perfect Life by Eileen Pollack Page A

janitor, was mopping the floors. The sooner he finished, the sooner he could go home. But Willie was planted in the middle of the hall, and I knew he wouldn’t move until I had asked him the same question he had asked me. “Were you ashamed? Of your father, I mean. Of Dusty.”
    He stroked his big chin. “I don’t know,” he said. “We would be out somewhere, and I’d see all these people staring. I thought it was because he was so famous. You know, ‘There goes Dusty Land and his son.’ Then I realized they didn’t have the faintest idea who this old geezer was. They thought he was a drunk. So yeah, I guess I was a little embarrassed. But my mother—”
    â€œYou talk someplace else.” Cesar shook his mop in our direction. I always got in his way. I would wait outside the lab while he worked, but I was usually so impatient I came back in too early and tracked up his shiny tiles.
    Cesar swabbed his mop between us and carried on down the hall, leaving us stranded on two islands of dirt. Willie laughed. “My mom’s just like that guy. She’ll be sweeping the crumbs off the tablecloth while you’re still eating.” He tucked his hair behind his ears. “That’s part of why she married my dad. When they met, he was, you know, this shabby cowboy. Sometimes he’d go off on these benders, thumb his way to L.A. or Alaska. Then he’d show up on her doorstep. He’d have this six-week-old beard. Calluses. Lice. She’d carry on, but she was enjoying herself. You could tellby the way she’d get him in a tub and soap him. She’d take a razor to his face. She’d kneel down and cut away the dead skin on his heels.”
    I wondered what it was like to be on such intimate terms with a man’s body. In the year I had nursed my mother, I had grown maddeningly familiar with the mole on her left buttock, the bramble of hairs reforesting her thighs, the puckered skin around her nipples. But I had never been that familiar with a man. Not even the bodies of the few men I had slept with.
    Willie seemed to regret having spoken at length on such a gloomy subject. “So where’s the maternity ward?” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Paging Dr. Weiss, paging Dr. Weiss, mouse in labor on four.”
    It occurred to me that I would be an idiot to show Willie our mouse room. Buddhists were so squeamish they avoided stepping on ants. Or maybe that was Hindus. All I knew was he wasn’t going to like what he saw. “This isn’t for people with faint hearts,” I warned him.
    â€œFaint hearts? You’re talking to a man who helped his wife give birth in a cabin with no running water.”
    Again I felt a pang of jealousy, although I couldn’t figure out if I was jealous because I had vowed to remain single, or because Willie had been married to a woman who wasn’t me. “Well,” I said, “don’t complain,” although already I could tell he wasn’t the type to complain.
    â€œLook,” he said, “if you really don’t want me to come, I won’t.”
    But the idea of him leaving saddened me. “All right. Just don’t give me a hard time,” I warned him.
    He followed me to the mouse room. The odor was strangely appealing—pungent and sweet—even as it made you want to throw up. I flicked on the light, and the mice rustled in their shavings.
    â€œWhich of the poor bastards have Valentine’s?” Willie asked.
    I could see he pitied these mice. His father had died of Valentine’s, yet he considered me cruel to breed these mice and study them. I yanked a cage from a shelf. In one corner, an emaciated white mouse stood with its head cocked and its hind legs rooted to the floor. Every part of it trembled. The mouse kept wringing its paws.
    Then, as we watched, it sprang up in the air. The other mice shrieked. It leaped about, flailing. Then it