The Last House on Needless Street

Ted is gone again. Olivia turns to the Bible for guidance. When it falls from the table, it is accompanied by a terrible crashing noise, as though the world is ending. When she collects her nerves, Olivia reads the passage, which depicts Ehud driving a blade into his own stomach. She does not understand.

Olivia hears the TV psychologist discussing trauma again. In the living room, she observes the nesting doll and picture frame on the mantle. The psychologist talks about trauma and childhood abuse. His smell invades the room, and Olivia is suddenly aware of a male presence at the front door; the man is both on TV and at the front door at once.

Unable to deal with the incursion, Olivia wishes Ted were there; she forgives him for cutting her fur. She decides to take a nap.

Ted sits with Olivia watching TV. He worries about her. He wonders if he is overreacting because of how much he misses Lauren. He is also upset that Dee never showed up at the bar.

Ted and Olivia hear heavy machinery lumbering up Needless Street toward the forest. Ted is so upset that he almost forgets to lock the front door. Many of his neighbors are already outside. Ted asks Dee what is happening. She explains that the city is constructing new rest stops for hikers in the woods.

Ted runs into the woods. The bulldozers are tearing up the land less than 300 feet from his secret clearing. Ted left the gods buried there for too long without moving them. He thinks they attract people with their presence.

Ted returns to the birch clearing that night, sad to have to move the gods from a spot that has been a good home for them. The location of each one is burned in his mind. Ted believes they feed the earth; he leans in and listens to their secrets. He tells each one “I hold you in my heart” as he unearths them (141). The first is a blue dress, which he pets gently; it makes him feel sad, yet itchy, almost excited. The next is a vanity case, which he rushes to unearth; the case contains sharp, shining things. With each god he unearths, he relives “the moment of the godmaking, the sorrow” (142). His heart is heavy as he covers and disguises the holes.

Ted searches for an appropriate home for the gods. He feels one with the forest, as if it holds him in his heart. In another birch grove, far from the trail, he carefully places the gods in niches in the rock wall from which a spring flows.

The sun is rising. He tells the birds that he misses them. Ted is physically and emotionally exhausted, but he is glad the gods are safe.

Even though every house on Needless Street received a flyer about the construction, the arrival of the machines surprises Dee. She joins the other neighbors to watch. The orange-juice hair man arrives to express his concern about the construction crew using toxic neon paint on the trees; he is a ranger, concerned about the environment.

Ted appears behind her. She recognizes in his eyes “that look, of a secret nearly revealed” (146). When Ted runs into the forest, Dee is agonized that she cannot follow; he would easily see her. When she sees him return half an hour later, she knows that he will be acting tonight, possibly moving Lulu.

Dee follows Ted out into the woods that night. In the undergrowth without a flashlight, her ophidiophobia is triggered. She hides behind a bulldozer as Ted enters the clearing where his gods are buried. When he returns sometime later, she attempts to follow him further, but her fear of snakes drives her back.

Dee flees in a panic and locks herself in her house. She hears Ted return later.

Olivia records her thoughts. Lauren has not been around lately, which is good, because Ted has really been trying to date, and Lauren hates that. There have been no recent signs of the television psychologist. The high-pitched sound still plagues Olivia. She consults the Bible even though she is afraid because of what happened last time. The passage prompts her to go check on Ted. He is in bed playing with a strip of blue cloth. Things seem to be returning to normal.

Ted relives the incident with the mouse.

When Ted was in school, every homeroom class had a pet: his class’s was a white mouse named Snowball. Students took turns taking care of Snowball on weekends. When Ted’s turn arrived, he had to sneak Snowball into the house; his mother would not approve because she believed that owning pets is slavery. The incident happened, and Ted did not bring Snowball back on Monday. Ted did not get in trouble. However, he remembers, “there were other feelings too, which were more pleasant. I had discovered a new part of myself” (154). His homeroom teacher had it out for Ted after that. The teacher eventually became principal and expelled Ted for punching another student.

Ted feels his mother’s presence and begs her to leave him alone. He remembers a relaxation technique the bug man taught him that helps. He unlocks the laptop and peruses the dating site. Eventually, he sets up a date with another single mother, using a fake profile photo.

Ted has been gone for a day and a night. On television, a murderer stalks a girl in a rainy parking lot; Olivia notes how realistic the girl’s acting is.

Olivia is starving. She patrols the house for the scent of blood. She fishes under the refrigerator and finds a cracker. She also pulls out a white, child’s sandal, the underside stained with blood. She is concerned, wondering if she or Night-time somehow hurt Lauren.

Ted comes into the kitchen and sees the sandal. He wonders, “Why won’t it stay gone? I don’t want it down here, I don’t want you to see it” (160). Ted puts Olivia in the crate and piles things on top of it, locking her in. Olivia is worried; he has never done this before. She cannot sleep, convinced there is someone else in the crate with her.

Ted was five when he realized his mother was beautiful. He was proud and jealous of the way others looked at her. He became protective of her at school and envious of the kids she worked with at the hospital. Mrs. Bannerman was heartbroken when the hospital let her go.

Mrs. Bannerman was good friends with the chihuahua lady (at that time, the dachshund lady), her coworker at the hospital. He remembers the dachshund lady coming over for coffee one day before Ted’s problems at school began. Ted overheard the neighbor saying the police had begun interviewing the nurses and hospital staff. Mrs. Bannerman calmly speculated it may have to do with the hospital misappropriating money. The dachshund woman said that it never made sense to her why they fired Mrs. Bannerman. Ted became upset, so he climbed into the chest freezer and closed the lid.

When Ted exited the freezer, a long time had passed. The house was dirtier now. Mr. Bannerman had left for good after Ted punched him in the head for calling Mrs. Bannerman “insane.” The neighbor now had a terrier instead of a dachshund. Mrs. Bannerman complained about their windows being broken by neighborhood kids. Teddy was bigger and older. He was in the midst of completing a job application. The terrier woman spoke of her planned vacation to Mexico with a much younger man.

Ted’s memory drifts. He remembers the second time his mother took him to the woods—this time, to bury Snowball the mouse. Ted was distraught when he found Snowball’s remains. He screamed and screamed that he did not do it. He smashed the Russian nesting doll. He almost threw the music box, but he let it fall to the floor, breaking on impact.

Mrs. Bannerman led Ted to the woods, and they buried the box in a birch grove. Ted felt the remains of the mouse become a god. Mrs. Bannerman explained they have discovered that Ted has a sickness that makes him want to hurt living things. Her father had it too.

In Locronan, death was at the center of life. In the iliz, the church, was a carving of the Ankou, a Celtic death-god. Children would play in the cemetery because there were no playgrounds. Noises would sometimes come from the iliz in the dead of night, but people ignored it. Pemoc’h, went missing, causing Mrs. Bannerman to follow her father to the iliz one night. She saw the evidence of her father’s sadism and what had become of Pemoc’h. When she told the villagers, they came in the night, took her out of bed, bound her father, and set the house on fire. Mrs. Bannerman was exiled from the village. She eked a living through her wits and her medical skills, until she met Mr. Bannerman and came to America. She felt the Ankou follow her.

Mrs. Bannerman told Ted that one day he will have the urge to kill again, and he will not be able to resist it. She told him to take care to never let anyone see who he really is. Ted thanked her for not being mad. On the contrary, she was relieved; she expected this. She no longer had to think of him as her son or have to pretend to love him anymore. This wounds Ted, and he cries again. Mrs. Bannerman said that Ted is her responsibility. She will protect him and not permit others to call him “insane.”

Ted tried and failed to fix the nesting doll and the music box. His mother kept the box but threw the dolls away.

Ted wants to record his recipe for vinegar strawberry sandwiches, but he does not have the heart for it.