If You're Not Yet Like Me by Edan Lepucki Read Free Book Online Page B

outside, where it belonged?
    Dig, dig, dig, said the possum. It came out as a snort.
    Margaret thought she heard a suppressed roar coming from the kitchen. Before the turgid novel, she’d been reading a book about the history of Al-Qaeda; in it, the author told about Taliban members who had broken into an Afghani zoo. One man decreed the bear’s “beard” too short and cut off the animal’s nose; another zealot leapt into the lion’s den yelling, “I am the lion now!” The lion killed him. The noseless bear survived.
    When Margaret had first read that passage, she’d been appalled. Those kinds of men had to be contained. The longer she spent away from the book, though, the more the lesson changed. Now she thought the story meant something else entirely. Such as: Do not underestimate the strength of animals.
    When Margaret was a girl, her father called her mother Mama Bear, as in, Go ask Mama Bear what’s for dinner, or, Mama Bear’s going to tuck you in tonight. Her mother was cornstalk-thin, though, not like a bear at all, and Margaret never followed her father’s lead.
    With oven mitts on his hands, Toby knelt on the floor. “Come here, little possum,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.”
    The possum crouched next to the couch, a few inches from the wall. He sat on his hind legs like the smallest squirrel, his pink nose twitching. The white of his face was heart-shaped.
    “Where’s your mommy?” Toby asked.
    He meant to swipe at the animal, to push it closer to the open door, but the possum only sniffed the oven mitt. Smell, smell, smell!
    “Hey, Buddy,” Toby whispered, something in his chest opening.
    The possum opened its mouth briefly, as if to yawn, or smile. Its tongue was the same shade of pink as its nose. It did not run, nor did it play dead like other possums when afraid. This possum had only been separated from its mother for an hour or so, but it had already forgotten all the ways of its species. It wasn’t afraid.
    Toby leaned forward and picked up the animal, who rolled into a ball in the palm of the oven mitt. “Hi, baby.”
    The possum was two months old. When it was born—hairless, blind, without legs—it was the size of a sugar cube.
    “Hello, hello,” Toby whispered. “Do you need help?”
    The possum emitted a soft sleepy growl.
    M argaret walked into the kitchen wearing her x-large t-shirt, her hair combed and twisted into a bun. She didn’t want to be chasing a wild animal—a beast with rabies, perhaps—in nothing but a towel and a mess of dripping hair. If the animal urinated or spit on the floor, how would they distinguish it from the bathwater?
    She grabbed the broom from the pantry. She would sweep the animal out the front door like so much dust.
    “Ready?” she said.
    But Toby had already swaddled the possum in a dish towel and now cradled the animal in his arms. The oven mitts waited on the counter, next to the two cakes: the edible and the burnt.
    “What are you doing?” Margaret said, opening her hands. The broom fell like a guillotine blade onto the floor, and the sound made the possum tremble.
    Toby hushed the animal. “He’s so sweet and docile.”
    Margaret shook her head. “The human stain, Toby.” She leaned into her husband, peering at the animal before drawing back. “You’ve marked him,” she said. “Now he’ll be shunned by the animal kingdom.”
    “Listen to you,” Toby said, bouncing the possum a little. “The animal kingdom? You sound like a PBS special.” Toby drew his lips down in a pout: a sad clown. “He’s fine, Mar. Aren’t you, little buddy?”
    “No,” Margaret said. “He belongs in nature, not in here.”
    “There was just a fire in the bathroom,” Toby said. “There are no boundaries.”
    “What are you talking about, no boundaries? “
    The possum burrowed into the dish towel. Warmth!
    “Really,” Margaret said. “We have to get it out of here.”
    Toby felt anger fizzing up in him. Sometimes his wife could be so