Chapter 2
One week before Danny’s mom leaves, she says the house has bugs.
Danny is twelve. He does not know for certain how old his parents are.
“What kind of bugs?” his dad asks over breakfast.
“I don’t know. Ants. I saw them in my bathroom.”
They pause—all of them. “Her bathroom” is technically Danny’s bathroom, though she’s been using it for some months now because she’s been sleeping in the bedroom for the little sister who never eventuated.
She has never referred to the little bathroom as hers before, and now she wraps her ivory puffy coat tighter around her shoulders and does not look at either her husband or son across the table.
It is autumn in Montana, and cold, and everything is dying.
“I’ve never seen any ants,” his dad says, “but I’ll take a look.”
Three days before Danny’s mom leaves, she emerges from the bathroom with her hair dryer still in one hand and says, “Calvin. Bugs.”
Danny and his father follow her into the bathroom. They all stand there in front of the foggy mirror and look around and after a suitable amount of time has passed, Danny’s mom says, “Well, I swear they were just here.”
“Why don’t I set some extra traps just in case?
” Danny’s dad says, reaching to take her hand, which she places flat across her shoulder as if for the express purpose of avoiding being held.
It strikes Danny as the worst thing his father could have done, though he can’t imagine what would have been right.
One day before Danny’s mom leaves, she relocates her hair dryer and curling iron and whitening toothpaste back to the primary bathroom, which leaves Danny with a deep sense of foreboding he cannot explain.
He feels he will never understand the contrariness of people, the unmappability.
In the backyard, throwing the tennis ball for Biscuit, Danny’s dad says to Danny, “Guess she got tired of the ants, huh?”
“I never saw any ants,” Danny says.
Behind them, the screen door audibly shuts. Danny glances over his shoulder and does not see his mother. His father sets a hand on Danny’s shoulder. When Danny shifts away, his dad ducks his chin like he’s been injured.
The day after Danny’s mom leaves, Danny flips on the lights in his bathroom and looks at the static blooming across the mirror, the fuzzing blackness, the frenetic whorls of thousands and thousands of ants.
As if summoned by Danny’s silent distress, Danny’s father appears in the mirror beside him.
They stand together to watch the ants rivering through cracks in the grout and up the showerhead and across the tile and around the drain.
In the mirror, Danny appears to be swarmed.
When his dad lightly places his hand on his shoulder, Danny flinches, which makes his dad flinch, but how can you blame Danny? He feels like he is covered in ants.
Danny goes into his bedroom and locks the door, which he knows is rude and immature but also he feels like he’s dying, like the ceiling is caving in, like he has knocked his life into an irretrievably claustrophobic direction.
The day before, his mom vanished. He came home from school and she was just gone.
His dad said she was just taking some time, but that she’d probably be back real soon.
How soon? Danny calls his mom to tell her she was right, but she doesn’t pick up.
When he goes back to the bathroom, his dad is gone.
The ants have moved to the window now, blocking out the sun.
Danny opens the cabinet under the sink with the tip of his shoe and retrieves a roll of paper towels.
Historically, Danny took bugs outside, not out of kindness but out of guilt.
He stops feeling guilty after the first hundred.
He does not cry, or make any sound at all, because he does not dare open his mouth. But he does kill them. Every last one.