Miriam Toews - A Boy of Good Breeding

“Oh, so he’s Leonard Cohen all of a sudden, moping around Europe in a big black coat all grim and sad-faced because it’s what he has to do? Gimme a break. So now you’re just gonna forgive him and let him see S.F. and waltz right back into your life, just like that? Have some self-respect, for Pete’s sake, Knute.”

“Yeah, but what about S.F.? He is her father, after all. If he wants to see her, shouldn’t I let him? Just because he’s a moron doesn’t mean she wouldn’t want to see him, right? She knows about him and everything. I mean, she can decide later if she hates him enough never to see him again. I can’t really decide that for her, you know.”

“Why not? Lots of parents do that. If you think she’s better off without him in her life, then that’s that. You decide.”

“Well, you let Ron see Josh even though Ron’s an idiot.”

“Yeah, but he pays me, Knute. You know, child support? I’m forced to let him see Josh.”

“But don’t you think you’d want Josh to know Ron even if he wasn’t paying you?”

“Absolutely not. Ron’s a twit. Josh can do better than him for a father.”

“Well, Marilyn, that doesn’t make any sense. He is his father. You’re the one who could have done better than him for a boyfriend. There’s nothing you can do about him being Josh’s dad. And just because he’s a twit doesn’t mean Josh doesn’t like him.”

“Hmm, I don’t know, Knute. You know what I think? I think you’re still hot for Max.”

“Wrong-o.”

“You are! I can tell. I can always tell. You definitely are still hot for Mighty Max.”

“Oh God, Marilyn. I don’t even know him anymore.”

“Yeah? So what’s your point? Welcome to—”

S.F. came into the bathroom and asked if she could join Knute in the tub. Marilyn heard S.F. asking and said, “Oh God, don’t you hate that?”

“Yeah. I have to add more cold. Okay, I gotta go.”

“You know what you have to do, Knute?” said Marilyn.

“What.”

“You have to learn how to make pudding. It says on the box you have to stir constantly, constantly , and it takes a good twenty or thirty minutes before the stuff boils. So if S.F. is bugging you, you know, asking for this and that, you say, Sorry ma’am, do you want pudding or not? I cannot leave this pudding for a second.”

“Yeah?” said Knute.

“Yeah,” said Marilyn, “it’s great. I make tons of pudding, and while I stir I read. Thin, light books ’cause you only have one hand to hold ’em. Josh can’t do a thing about it, so he actually amuses himself and I get a decent break. All hell can break loose around me. I don’t care, I’m making pudding.”

“That’s a great idea, Marilyn,” said Knute. “What happens when he gets sick of pudding?”

“I don’t know, I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll think of something when that time comes, though. Something less fattening.”

“Yeah. Marilyn, you have to come and visit me here soon, okay?”

“Definitely,” said Marilyn, and they put off saying good-bye for a while and then eventually hung up.

That night just before Knute went to bed she watched S.F. sleep. A strand of hair was stuck in her mouth. Knute removed it. S.F. put it back in. She was beautiful. An angel made in heaven, as Combine Jo had said. God, thought Knute, that woman was S.F.’s paternal grandmother! Not that it mattered. In Knute’s opinion, Combine Jo was more interested in her next drink and her piles of money than she was in S.F. Or even Max.

Dory had told Knute, when she was pregnant with S.F., that Combine Jo hadn’t always been the way she was now. Years and years ago, she had been the wife of the wealthiest farmer in Algren. She had been beautiful and serene. Before Max was even a year old, she had had an affair with a farmer from Whithers. One stormy spring night she had stayed at her lover’s place under the pretext that the roads were too treacherous to get back to Algren. The next day she returned home to find Max, her baby, just about frozen to death, lying unconscious and bruised on the kitchen floor — her husband beside him, dead and covered with logs. Apparently he had had an epileptic seizure while trying to fire up the woodstove, dropped Max, whom he had been carrying in one arm, fallen down and died right there. After that Combine Jo started eating and drinking and swearing and generally raising hell all over Algren, until she became too fat and alcoholic to easily make her way out of her house.

With all the money left to her and Max in her husband’s will, and by selling most of the farm, Combine Jo was able to hire enough people to look after Max when he was little, and bring her food and booze. She got the name Combine Jo not because she was as big as one, but because each spring she would take her husband’s old combine out of the barn and drive it up and down Algren’s Main Street as a personal spring-seeding celebration. Dory thought that Combine Jo might carry a sawed-off rifle in the cab of the combine, but nobody knew for sure. She would career down the street, one hand on the wheel, the other clamped around her bottle of Wild Turkey. She would then drive the combine to her husband’s grave, often right up over it, and enjoy a toast with him. She’d pour half a bottle of bourbon into the grass on top of his grave, light a cigarette and prop it up, as best she could, in the grass around where his head would have been, six feet under, and then she’d lie there beside him, where she felt she belonged.

Combine Jo had loved her husband deeply. The affair had been a stupid distraction, a way to pass the time while her husband farmed night and day. Knute wondered if Jo had ever given Max any advice on love. Maybe she’d told Max to leave town when she found out Knute was pregnant. Maybe it wasn’t his idea at all. Maybe Jo gave Max a million bucks to leave. Maybe I’m a complete idiot, thought Knute.

If she thought he had left because Jo had told him to, she was fooling herself. And her telling him to get lost the day that she found out she was pregnant and he hadn’t seemed happy enough — happy at all, really — wouldn’t have been enough for him to leave, either. Knute was always telling him to get lost, knowing he’d come back.

No, Max had left because he’d wanted to leave. And now he was coming back because he wanted to come back, and he wanted to see his “goddamned daughter.”

“Well,” Knute concluded, “Fuck him.”

That same evening, Lorna had come out to Algren on the bus to visit Hosea. When Hosea got home from work he had listened to her message on the machine. And then he had listened to it again, sitting on his couch, still in his coat and dripping water from his boots on to the living room carpet. “Hi, Hose,” she’d said. “Are you there? If you’re there, pick up the phone.” Hosea smiled. Doesn’t she know me better? he thought. Hosea had nearly killed himself a couple of times running for the phone when he’d heard Lorna’s voice coming over the machine. “Okay, I guess you’re not there.” Lorna wouldn’t call Hosea at work. She used to, at the beginning of their relationship, but after a while she had told him he always sounded distracted at work and she didn’t need to call long distance to get the cold shoulder. Hosea had pleaded with her to understand. He was the mayor, after all, of Canada’s smallest town. He had work to do. He loved her more than life itself but … But no, Lorna was unmoved. And since then had called him only at home. “Our office is closed tomorrow so I thought I’d come on the bus and stay over and you could take me home the next day or the next, or I’ll just take the bus again. Okay. Whatever. You’re really not there, are you? Hmmm. Okay, call me, but if you get this message after six o’clock, don’t bother because I’ll be on the bus. I should—”