“Life is like work and consists of motions in sequence,” Ethel had said, but Sally did not feel that she was moving with purpose, but as if she were wandering around aimlessly, lost in an odd parenthetical stretch of time removed from before and after. At school everything was swept up into Christmas—silver glitter, Elmer’s glue, “Up on the Housetop,” “Silent Night,” and all the eager children crazed by anticipation and advertisement. Getting divorced was the same as falling in love in a way, she discovered. Everywhere she went she felt that people could just look at her and tell. It must show.

And it did. Her principal called her in and said, “Sally, if you need time…” The lunchroom lady baked her a nine-by-thirteen-inch coconut cake. After the party when a little student threw up his red punch and green Rice Krispies squares, Dolores, her helper, said, “Mrs. Lewis, you go sit down and rest yourself and let me clean this up.” Then it was all merry merry and happy happy, the first cold snap, and the last day of school.

“Now is when the rats move in,” said Ethel, and she got out her old Blue Horse notebook of rat-trap histories and her collection of wire traps—funnel traps, trapdoor traps, and drop traps. In the long evenings as they sat in the glow of the Christmas tree, Ethel would oil the hinges in the traps and talk about rats, and Sally would stare into the fire and think about her married life. In her head she worked out little exercises in terrifying arithmetic: thirty-three years—she had probably been married to Dave longer than the years she had left to live.

“It is a wonderful rat, the pack rat,” Ethel said, “strong, wily, vigorous, with a keen intelligence—and the most destructive rat known to man.” She leafed through her notebook. “In February of 1965, in one three-hour period between two and five a.m., a single rat completely destroyed the wiring in your uncle M’s new Dodge. And on December thirtieth, 1972, a rat chewed the bottom corner off a heart-pine door, got into a closet, and shredded a Navajo blanket, two down quilts, and a wedding dress.”