The Last House on Needless Street

Frustrated that Ted will not wake up to answer the door, Olivia wakes him up. Olivia is confident that Ted will turn the visitor away, but to her horror, Ted lets her in. Olivia momentarily feels as though her reality is collapsing.

Olivia hides under the bed in horror as the scent of this woman fills the house. She overhears their conversation; Ted’s voice sounds interested. Olivia becomes upset and jealous, her perception of reality shaken. When the woman leaves and Ted goes back to his nap, she punishes him by opening the refrigerator and freezer doors to spoil the food.

Dee steps on Ted’s broken ornaments, which litter his front stoop, as she walks to the front door. She wonders if she will know if Ted is the one she is looking for when she sees him. Part of her hopes there will be no answer, but she remembers her father telling her to get it done, something he often said during the early days of Lulu’s absence. She rings the bell 30 or 40 times before Ted answers.

Dee introduces herself and offers Ted a pumpkin pie. She asks to use his bathroom because her water is off. Ted reluctantly agrees. She steps inside; the interior of the house reminds her of the underworld. She hears Detective Karen’s voice in her head: “A chaotic home environment. Unmarried. Socially marginal” (95).

Ted is younger than she thought—in his mid-thirties. He has missing patches of hair. She asks if he has kids. Ted mentions Lauren and that he does not get to see her enough. In the bathroom, Dee is highly aware of the vulnerability of her body.

In the kitchen, Lauren manages to endear herself to Ted a bit by talking about cats. She notices the chest freezer that Olivia likes to hide in. Inside is a yellow blanket with a pattern of blue butterflies. She sees a reddish-brown hair in the freezer. Ted closes it. She asks Ted about his injured arm; he says he closed a car door on it. They part in a neighborly way. Dee can feel Ted watching her as she leaves. She hears him lock the door behind her.

Back inside the rented house, Dee has a panic attack. When she recovers, she explores the new house, eventually settling down to read Wuthering Heights, the only book she ever reads.

Eventually, Dee hears scratching behind a bookcase she moved in front of a broken window. She moves it and comes face to face with a ghostly child. Dee invites it in. The child hisses, and fear washes over Dee; she screams, breaking her dream-state. The child is the stray tabby cat.

Dee spends the next day staking out Ted’s house from her window, observing his habits and researching what she can about him on the internet. She discovers Ted’s mother was a nurse; she was also beautiful. She tries to follow Ted into the woods, but she thinks he can sense her presence, so she gives up.

After two uneventful days, Dee almost gives up, when she hears something like breaking glass. Going to the window, she hears a high voice complaining that it does not want to do algebra. To Dee, the voice sounds just like Lulu.

Lauren complains about doing algebra. She pulls at her hair—her favorite way of acting out. Lauren apologizes. She offers to make dinner because Ted looks tired. Ted is touched by this gesture.

Lauren makes spaghetti, making a mess of the kitchen in the process. The food is not good, but Ted eats it anyway. Lauren has little appetite. Ted says, “The chef never has an appetite […]. Your grandmother. She said that a lot. Along with, ‘never call a woman insane’” (106). Lauren replies that she isn’t her grandmother.

Lauren’s food gives them intense food poisoning. They are laid up in bed for a day and a night. When they recover, Ted tells Lauren it is time for her to go away for the week. She protests, and Ted loses his temper; he tells her she is grounded.

When Lauren is gone, Ted checks the trashcan where he threw away the meat that spoiled in the open refrigerator. The fact that there is less of it in the bag means Lauren used it for the pasta sauce. Ted thoroughly inspects the house. He is sure Lauren tried to poison them both. It has been a while since she attempted something like this. He finds the list he keeps of potential bird murderers. Lauren’s name has been added in pink marker.

Olivia waits for the tabby at her peephole, listening to the television. A daytime television psychologist talks about investigating the roots of trauma. Olivia is annoyed, but it helps to drown out the high-pitched sound that is with her all the time now. She does not like the psychologist and wonders how she can smell him, even though he is on television.

Olivia wants her own TV show where she can describe her day and talk about the tabby she loves. She thinks it would be good to share her experiences and thoughts with the world.

Ted misses Lauren. After some reflection, he knows she could not be the murderer: she would not be able to go outside or get glue traps without his knowledge.

Ted goes to his appointment with the bug man. Ted makes up a television show about a teenage girl with violent tendencies to tell the bug man about. One day, the girl’s mother injures the girl so she cannot walk anymore; it is an accident, but the girl now hates her. Ted asks (hypothetically) about this situation in real life. The bug man explains it would be a complicated situation of nature and nurture.

The bug man asks Ted if he wants to talk about his daughter. The bug man says, “There’s a monster inside each of us […]. If you let yours out, Ted, it might not eat you” (112). Ted is shocked; the bug man now seems dangerous. The bug man tells Ted that he depersonalizes his daughter, applying her attributes and situation to his cat. Ted gets angry and shouts but immediately apologizes. The bug man tells him this is a safe place to express his anger. He looks safe again. Ted tunes out as the bug man continues to talk about trauma and memory.

On his way home, Ted again sees missing person flyers posted around the neighborhood for the chihuahua woman.

Ted has been gone for several days, leaving Olivia with no food. Olivia is peaceful and does not like to hunt, but she is starving. She lets her other nature, Night-time, take over. Night-time looks like Olivia, but without the white stripe on her chest. He is always waiting in the back of Olivia’s mind.

Olivia comes back to herself in the bathroom, retching over a small pile of bloody bones on the floor. She does not know what kind of animal they are from—probably a mouse or squirrel from the attic. Olivia does not go to the attic because she thinks there are ghosts up there. Night-time does not care. Thinking about ghosts upsets Olivia; the remains suddenly look humanlike. Hearing something crawl around in the attic, Olivia flees to her crate until hunger drives Night-time to hunt again.

A blonde woman from the dating website agrees to meet Ted. However, this throws Ted into a panic due to his low self-esteem and appearance. He decides to pawn the silver frame that contains the picture of his parents, one of the last valuable things in the house. After selling the frame, he goes to an outdoors gear shop, and after an awkward exchange with the cashier, buys a new outfit.

Ted asked to meet the woman at a roadhouse bar and restaurant. He thought it would be a nice place to meet because of the outdoor seating with its festive lighting. However, this plan fails due to a thunderstorm. The interior of the bar is dismal.

Ted sits at the bar and sees the woman walk in. She does not recognize him because he used a picture of someone else on the dating website. They agreed to wear blue, due to their discussion of the album Blue, which Ted plays constantly at home. Ted is not wearing blue. Ted orders several boilermakers and watches her.

Eventually, the woman gets up to go. She looks disappointed. Ted follows her out to the parking lot. He thinks she seems like the kind of person that would be good for Olivia and Lauren. He approaches her car.

Ted goes to Dee early one morning asking for help opening a jar. Inside the jar is a note: “LET’S GO OUT FOR DRINKS” (123). Ted emphasizes that he wants to go as friends. He suggests tonight because he goes away a lot, and he might be spending more time at his weekend place. Dee asks if it is by the lake, but Ted says no, she would not know it. They agree to meet at 7:00pm at the roadside bar.

When Ted leaves at 6:30pm, Dee breaks into Ted’s house. She pries open a window whose latch she had noticed was rusted through. She removes the rusted nails from the plywood and slips into Ted’s kitchen.

Dee carefully explores Ted’s house, finding little except some dried blood on Ted’s sheets. She finds drawings of unicorns in pink marker on the walls of one bedroom. She thinks she sees Olivia, and she calls out to her, but it was a trick of her eyes.

Dee exits through the window she opened, hammering the plyboard shut with brand-new nails—the ones she removed were rusted and useless. Back in the safety of her rented house, she lets go of the hope that Lulu is still in Ted’s house. She reasons that Lulu must be at Ted’s weekend place. She whispers to Lulu that she is coming for her.

Olivia can hear the high-pitched whining on the tape recordings she makes; it is not just in her head.

Olivia says something awful happened. Ted came home drunker than usual. Leaving the door open, he asked if Olivia wanted to go outside—but first, he wanted to give her a makeover. Seizing her, he sawed off chunks of her fur with a knife. Ted went into a fugue state and dropped her.

Olivia wants revenge. She smashes a brand-new bottle of bourbon and destroys the Russian nesting doll. She tries to do the same to the silver picture frame, but it will not budge. She urinates in each of Ted’s shoes. Ted calls to her, but she “won’t go to him, even though his voice is filled with black spikes” (132).