Pauline

a short story by eileen kelly

Notes on “Pauline”: the following story was written in February of 2020.

Mrs. Beverly Middleton lived on the corner of 32nd Street and Lilac Avenue, in a brick house where she had lived since she was a child, and where her mother had lived before that, and where her grandmother had lived before that, and where her great-grandmother had lived before that. It was a very average-looking house, Mrs. Middleton often thought, and this pleased her. She was perfectly happy to live a life that was calm and peaceful and free of anything that might make it just a bit too interesting.

            Each morning, Mrs. Middleton would make a cup of coffee—the same way, every day, with a splash of milk and just the tiniest pinch of sugar—and go to her back garden to read, sitting on a bench beneath the oak tree that leaned over her fence from the neighbor’s yard, until the children that lived in the houses to either side of hers started to leave for school, hollering and yelling on their way up the sidewalk. Then she would be drawn out of her book and go back inside, a little irritated with the interruption, even though she knew that it was bound to happen.

            It was at this point in the morning on a Friday when the children had been particularly excited and rambunctious when she heard the noise—a rustle that seemed to come from next to the house, muffled behind her perfectly-trimmed rosebushes. She had been halfway up the back steps, with half a mind to call her nephew and nag him a bit, perhaps, to dispel her bad mood, but she stopped, turning to look down into the small hallway formed between the bushes and the brick wall.

            “Oh!” shrieked Mrs. Middleton. “A rat!”

            The little creature looked up, its pointed nose to the sky, squinting in the bright sunlight that streamed into its eyes. Then it rolled over, onto its side, eyes shut, hairless tail stretching out limply behind it on the dark earth.

            Pauline had just been thinking about the next juicy bug she would dig up when she heard the yell from above her. “A rat?” she thought, startled. “I’m not a rat!” And then she was gone, passed out under the twisting tendrils of the thorny rosebush.

            When Pauline woke again, she was still lying next to the brick wall, although the light seemed muffled now, the sun dimmed as if it was retreating below the horizon. But upon further investigation, it appeared to Pauline that this was not the case. It seemed that she was existing in a bubble, formed by one medium-sized plastic container that smelled to her keen nose as if it had been left in a basement, perhaps one that occasionally got a bit damp.

            “Over here.” she heard a voice say from above, and her ears twitched in that direction. “I think that it’s dead, but it’s the biggest rat I’ve ever seen.”

            There was the crunching of footsteps on the grass. She suddenly found her vision filled with a huge yellow boot, a bit foggy through the plastic. There was a loud sound then, a sound of laughter, and not coming from the woman who’s voice she had heard before. It sounded like a child, perhaps.

            “Why, Mrs. Middleton,” the voice, which Pauline now recognized as that of a young child, said after it had resolved its laughter. “That’s no rat. That’s an opossum! And it’s not dead at all—look at it, breathing! It was just playing dead, so you’d leave it alone.” Pauline was all of a sudden eye-to-eye with the child. “Looks like that didn’t work out so well for you, did it, bud?” The child poked a finger against the glass: tap tap tap. Pauline tried her best to calm her breathing, not wanting to black out again and miss more of the conversation that was unfolding before her.

            “An opossum?” Mrs. Middleton asked incredulously. “And what exactly am I to do with it?”

            The child shrugged. “Just let it go.” Yes! thought Pauline.

            “And have this creature running free in my garden?”

            “That’s probably what it was doing before.” Up above her, Pauline saw Mrs. Middleton shudder at the thought.

            “No, no. We must dispose of it. I simply cannot allow an opossum to be living here.” The child shrugged.

            “Suit yourself.” And with that, the child stood up again, shaking a dirt-dusted hand with Mrs. Middleton, who wiped it disdainfully onto her skirt, and sloshed back to the house next door in too-big gardening boots.

            Pauline heard a deep breath come from above her. The next thing she knew, she was being flipped upside down, her tiny, sharp toenails scrabbling for a grip on the smooth plastic bottom of the tub, her tiny pink nose being bopped by the lid of the bin as she suddenly found herself feeling like a goldfish in a fishbowl, with nowhere to go and nothing to do but stare out at the outside world.

It is at this point in our story, as our dear friend Pauline is at the mercy of one extremely distraught Mrs. Middleton, we must pause for a moment to become more acquainted with the young opossum. You see, Pauline is only a child herself, and she is still unaccustomed to the world of humans. Perhaps, if Pauline was a bit older, she would be more wary, and less curious, keeping herself out of sight and going back to her tiny den when the sun began to rise, sleeping through the day, only waking and tip-toeing around the garden under a blanket of darkness. But Pauline had not yet learned these rules, and she thought now that if she could ever free herself of this unfortunate predicament that she would surely be much more cautious in her grub-hunting in the future.

            As it was now, Mrs. Middleton carried the clear crate to her car, a white one that was free of bumper stickers or scratched or dents in the paint, as pristine and ordinary as the house it was parked in front of. Pauline cowered in the corner of the crate, her head spinning dizzily at the bouncing motion caused by the woman’s footfalls.

            Mrs. Middleton placed Pauline on the front seat, careful to leave the lid propped just enough to allow some air to flow inside. Now that she knew that the creature in her possession was very much alive, she intended to keep it that way—after all, what was one to do with an opossum that was really and truly dead? Bury it in the garden? Mrs. Middleton wasn’t even sure that she owned a shovel, and she would feel more than a bit timid in asking her gardener, Henry, to do the job for her. He would be sure to ask questions—how, exactly, had Mrs. Middleton come into the possession of a dead opossum? No, it was much better to keep the creature alive, she thought.

            Mrs. Middleton muttered to herself as she fastened her seatbelt in the driver’s seat, keeping one eye warily on the bin next to her as she did so. “An opossum!” she said. “Now what on God’s great earth am I supposed to do with an opossum?” She turned the key, pulling out of the driveway slowly as she thought.

            The tidy, neatly-trimmed streets of Mrs. Middleton’s neighborhood quickly gave way to pothole-sprinkled country roads, and the orderly houses on each side of her car became alternating patches of forest and field. It was in avoiding one such pothole, with half of her mind on the maneuvering of the vehicle and the other half on the predicament of the curious creature in her passenger seat, that Mrs. Middleton ceased to pay attention to the road ahead of her, just for a moment. But a moment, as it turns out, was just enough time for a squealing truck to come up over the hill, it’s flatbed piled high with bales of hay.

            Pauline had been watching the scenery zoom past the window for the duration of the drive, her thudding heart unable to process the notion that there was this much wide open space outside of the garden she’d been born into, and finding herself filling with dread as she realized that with each turn of the car’s tires she was becoming further and further away from her home. But the truck jolted her out of her thoughts, and she let out a sharp hiss of surprise and alarm, shocking Mrs. Middleton into looking back up at the road.

            The truck swerved, and Mrs. Middleton did as well, with a shriek to rival the one that had erupted from her only earlier that same morning in the garden. The tires spun on gravel, making the car sputter and slide and drift onto the grassy strip of land that bordered the road, narrowly avoiding plunging down into the ditches that lay just beyond it. Tiny rocks flew up and hit the polished metal with tiny ping! ping! ping!s, leaving speck-sized dents in each place they landed.

            Finally, they came to a stop, and Mrs. Middleton sat in the driver’s seat heaving, watching the truck become smaller and smaller in her rearview mirror. After a few moments, her racing thoughts slowing, she thought to glance over at Pauline. “No!” she yelped, grabbing the crate and bringing it into her lap, resting it between the steering wheel and her body in a way that was most uncomfortable, but she couldn’t be bothered to care.

The little opossum lay in the middle of the crate, its pink-tipped snout turned towards Mrs. Middleton in a way that gave her a perfect view of its unmoving nostrils. She felt tears spring to her eyes, and not tears of shock from the crash—tears of sadness, for this little creature who she had so wished to dispose of just moments ago was dead. Why couldn’t she have just taken the advice of the little neighbor child, who, she now belatedly realized, was much more experienced in the interesting-ness that existed in the world than old Mrs. Middleton herself, with her average house and average car and perfectly ordinary life.

            But then Pauline moved, twitched one circular ear, and then the other, opened up one eye to see Mrs. Middleton’s teary face peering down at her through the plastic. “Oh!” gasped Mrs. Middleton, and she felt herself smiling in relief.

            Mrs. Middleton placed Pauline back into the passenger seat, turned the key, and set off again. After a little while, she pulled into a little clearing on the side of the road. “This is it.” thought Pauline, gloomily. “I’ll never see my little den again, or my favorite bug-digging patch behind the rosebushes.”

            But Mrs. Middleton didn’t dump Pauline out in the clearing, in fact, she didn’t even open the car door. Instead, she backed the white car out again, careful to look for any hay-carrying trucks, or any trucks, for that matter, that might be coming in either direction, and set off in the direction they had come.

            After a short while, Pauline found herself once again in the driveway of the perfectly-average brick house on the corner of 32nd Street and Lilac Avenue. Mrs. Middleton opened the door and picked up the crate, and Pauline noticed that perhaps her head did not spin quite as dizzily, this time, as they made their way through the gate and returned to the back garden.

            Mrs. Middleton placed the crate on the ground, pulling the lid off. She watched as the opossum placed its front paws on the edge, stretching to look out, its tail curling up in surprise. The opossum glanced back at her, as if it was unsure, and Mrs. Middleton waved. “Shoo!” she said, but she was smiling, a bit.

            Pauline darted back into the garden, making a run for her tiny den in the trees without a second glance back. And Mrs. Middleton turned, going back up the steps, deciding that perhaps she would call her nephew and tell him about the rather interesting day she had had.

            Every morning after that, Mrs. Middleton would make a cup of coffee—the same way, every day, with a splash of milk and just the tiniest pinch of sugar, and go to sit in the bench beneath the oak tree to read a book until the rambunctious noises of the neighbor children drew her out of its pages. Then, she would bookmark her place, stand, and make her way back up the steps, but not before pausing to wave hello to Pauline, who was always waiting for her in her favorite bug-digging patch behind the rosebushes.