Sipsworth

Helen goes to the library and asks for books about mice. The librarian’s son, Dominic, helps her to find the books as Helen registers for a library card. The librarian then invites Helen to coffee hour before she leaves with a book on caring for pet mice.

Helen walks to the shopping arcade, passing a row of elderly strangers and thinking that their names are no longer any more important than words on a bus pass. She buys new slippers, coffee, and a cookie and sits down to read the mouse care book. After walking home, she reads a section called “The Body Language of Your Mouse” and considers that the word “your” means the mouse is now her responsibility. She still threatens to take Sipsworth to the shelter but carries him into the kitchen in his slipper to keep her company. When she holds out a nut to him, Sipsworth grabs her finger and pulls himself into her palm. Helen’s hand trembles because she hasn’t touched another living creature in over 20 years. A storm is blowing, and the lights go out.

Helen feels her way to the sitting room and finds the couch. The mouse moves from her palm to her thigh and falls asleep. She tells him again about the well and how “in the end an animal” saved her (99). Sipsworth’s quiet cheerfulness reminds Helen of her parents, and she thinks that he is “definitely” a Cartwright. She recalls that Len took her name when they married, as he was an abandoned child.

Helen carries the mouse to the sink, but it holds tight to her palm. She holds him over his box, and he drops down, but she senses his disappointment. She goes to bed and thinks of the librarian and Dominic, wondering about their thoughts and memories.

On Thursday, Helen hears voices and realizes the power is back on. She picks up the mouse’s feces and reads about housing for a mouse. The fish tank is cracked and won’t do. She calls the animal shelter again, with no response, and then goes to the hardware store to buy a new tank. The man who sold her the glue traps recognizes Helen and introduces himself as Cecil Parks. Helen says she found the traps barbaric and that Cecil should stock humane traps, along with fish supplies. When he asks her name, he realizes that her father was the teacher who taught him how to read in 1986.

Helen’s left arm goes numb, and she feels dizzy. Cecil takes her to the back of the shop and makes her tea. They recall the smell of her father’s aftershave, and Cecil tells Helen about his former partner who left him 17 years ago and went to Spain. He invites her to come and watch lawn bowling with him.

Helen learns that Cecil doesn’t have a fish tank in stock; it will take a week to order one. She feels she can’t take a bus to another store because there will be people on it. Cecil offers to pick up a tank and drop it off at her house. Helen has to think about this, as nobody has been in the house since she moved there. Finally, she accepts.

On her way home, Helen buys produce for the mouse. Looking at a package of sausages, she pictures the mouse’s body and suddenly decides that eating meat is disgusting. She thinks that if a mouse can give and receive love, surely pigs, cows, and chickens are just as important. She goes home, removes all the meat she has, and buries it in the backyard.

Cecil rings the doorbell with the fish tank, waking Helen from a nap. She asks him to put it on the kitchen counter, and he notices Sipsworth in the sink. He asks to see her garden and offers to fix the lock on the patio door. While leaving, he tells Helen that he thinks her father would be happy to see them at this moment. This makes Helen cry.

Helen decides the tank will go in front of the couch and puts the mouse’s things inside. As she makes some soup, she tells Sipsworth all about David, who was a schoolteacher. The opera Rigoletto is on the radio, and as she loves opera, she puts on a fancy silk gold and green dress, causing Sipsworth to leap onto his pie box. She then carries him in his box to the new tank. He touches everything cautiously and then starts bouncing on top of his blue castle. They listen to the opera again, with Sipsworth in “his” slipper as Helen explains the plot to him. She pictures taking him to the opera. Len hated opera but took her once a year. By the closing act, the mouse emerges from the slipper, ready for bed. She tells him he is just like Len.

On Friday morning, Helen looks in on Sipsworth and finds him struggling to breathe. She calls a vet who says they don’t treat anything smaller than a rabbit. The man from the shelter finally calls her, and she yells at him to go away. She is surprised that she is so flustered and recalls that even when she heard about the car accident that killed her son, she forced herself to drink a cup of tea.

Calming herself, she counts the mouse’s breaths over 60 seconds and then makes a calculation about the air he is getting. She calls the cardiopulmonary department of the local hospital, explaining that she is at home with a patient who is having an acute respiratory attack. They offer an ambulance, and she instead calls for a taxi. Telling Sipsworth that she will get him help, she hops in the cab and compliments the driver on his speed.

At the hospital, Helen asks for the cardiopulmonary wing and says she is a doctor and it’s an emergency. Once in the wing, she says she needs some supplies to care for a housebound companion. Kathy, the nurse at the desk, tries to steer her to a pharmacy, but Helen instead writes out a list and explains that she is a doctor, providing an old ID that says she is Dr. Helen Cartwright and is Head of Pediatric Cardiology at a hospital in Sydney. The nurse remarks that her name seems familiar, and Helen replies that she invented the Cartwright Aortic Stem Valve in 1983. Another nurse who is listening in says that she had a “whole chapter” about Helen in nursing school. Kathy goes off to find Dr. Jamal, the head surgeon.

The doctor tells Helen that although she is famous among heart surgeons, he can’t give her regulated supplies. They go to the staff refreshment area to chat, and he tells her he has been using the Cartwright valve for years. He introduces her to a cashier as “one of the most famous cardiologists in the world” (136). As they sit, Helen confesses that the patient is a mouse. After his initial surprise, Jamal discusses Sipsworth’s condition. Then, after asking another doctor to finish his rounds, he goes off to get the supplies Helen needs. She tells him that the “patient” is named Sipsworth Cartwright.

Dr. Jamal drives Helen back to her house. On the way, he calls the exotic veterinarian in Oxford and gets Dr. Vicky Preston, the head vet, who asks Helen to make an appointment for Monday morning.

Back home, Helen sees that Sipsworth is sleeping and tells Jamal that the mouse’s physiology “keeps [her] guessing about a higher power” (141). He hopes Sipsworth’s condition is not mycoplasma, a respiratory tract infection, which is contagious to other mice. After consulting with the vet again, Jamal tells Helen to build an oxygen chamber for the mouse. The vet is sending over antibiotics. Helen tells him she can afford the medicine, as she has £900,000 in the bank. As she sends him off, she realizes she should have been kinder when she was the head of cardiology.

Helen calls Cecil Parks at the hardware store and asks him to help her build the oxygen chamber. He arrives with tools and contrives a chamber out of a plastic tub. The vet’s receptionist arrives with medicine and syringes, and Cecil offers to drive Helen to the vet on Monday.