Miriam Toews - A Boy of Good Breeding

Regards, Hosea Funk.

Nice sandals? She didn’t think so. She didn’t think Baert would care what she wore, that is if he even showed up. She flipped the note over and wrote Will Do, Cheers, K. and pocketed the twenty. She could wear some of Dory’s regular shorts on the Big Day and buy Summer Feelin’ some new ones. She called home but it was busy. She stared out the window for a while and watched three guys and two women renovating the old feed mill into a theatre. Hosea thought he’d get Jeannie or someone to organize a production of Arsenic and Old Lace or The Music Man and get it running over the summer. Right now the only thing that would make anybody think it was a theatre and not a feed mill was a huge sign that read Future Home of the Feed Mill Summer Theatre of Algren. Which reminded her, she was supposed to give the Welcome to Algren, Canada’s Smallest Town sign a fresh coat of red paint and mow the grass around it so it stood out properly. She decided to make a quick call to Marilyn first.

“How the hell are you?” asked Marilyn. “Are you in the city?”

“No, I’m at work, in Hosea’s office.”

“You’re working in the office now?”

“No, I’m calling from the office. I have to go and paint a sign.”

“The one in the ditch? The smallest town in the world?”

“In Canada. Yeah.”

Marilyn laughed and said, “Well, you still have the job, that’s a record, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I think so. I think it is, actually.”

“How’s the domestic situation?” she asked.

“Weird. How’s yours?”

“Stupid.”

“I figured. So, hey, do you and Josh want to come out here for Canada Day? There’ll be a little midway and fireworks, Baert might even show up.”

“What? The Prime Minister? Really?”

“Yeah, that’s the plan. It was in the paper a while ago. He promised to visit Canada’s smallest town on the first. And we might be it. I have to wear nice sandals.”

Marilyn was laughing. “Herod’s idea?” she asked.

“Hosea’s. Yeah. I know, I know.”

“You know, I’d like to meet the Prime Minister, I’ve got a couple of questions for him. What’s he gonna do, operate the ferris wheel? He’s pretty ancient, isn’t he?”

“He’ll just walk around, I guess, and check things out, make a speech. You know, the usual.”

They talked for a while and Marilyn told Knute she’d try to make it out on the first, and then Knute had to go and paint the sign. On the way to the ditch she decided to stop in at home and see how things were going. Everything was quiet when she got there. She looked around thinking maybe Max and S.F. would jump out at any second and scare the shit out of her. She looked into Tom’s bedroom and he appeared to be fast asleep. Then she heard some murmuring coming from the basement and she snuck down the stairs as quietly as she could.

“Yeah,” she heard Max say. “I miss you, too. Yeah. Yeah. No, not really.”

He was on the phone. Who does he miss? she wondered. And then she knew. He missed a woman. Some woman she didn’t know. Some woman he had met in Europe or somewhere. She sat on the bottom stair looking at his bare back and listening to him talking to this woman. “No,” he said, “I’m not, either. Yeah, I still do. I love you, too. What? Yeah, sometimes. Summer Feelin’. I know. My old girlfriend. She has blond hair, yeah, she’s four. Five? No, she’s four.”

Yeah, she’s fucking four, Knute thought to herself. Get it straight, asshole.

“Yeah, I broke it,” Max said. “Oh, I fell. Nah.”

“Tell her how you fell!” Knute yelled and she ran for the phone and grabbed it from him and threw it against the wall as hard as she could. Max sat there with his mouth hanging open for a few seconds and then he started yelling.

“What the hell are you doing? Where’d you come from?” That sort of thing and Knute was yelling, “What the hell are you doing, you fucking asshole!” That sort of thing. That sort of very typical thing. She yanked the cord out of the wall and then threw the phone at Max, both of them screaming the whole time. He ducked and the phone knocked over a lamp and the bulb shattered all over the rug. “Where the hell is S.F.?” she yelled. By now she was sobbing and yelling, “I thought I could trust you!” And mixed in with “Where’s S.F.?” and “Who was that?” and “I can’t fucking believe it.” Then back to “I thought I could fucking trust you!” Over and over. Max was trying to get to her, to hold her and calm her down, but his cast hooked onto the phone cord and he fell into the broken light bulb, and he cut his back and started to bleed, and just lay there, saying, “Calm the fuck down, Jesus Christ, calm the fuck down, please. She’s playing in the back, she’s playing in the backyard with Madison. Shut the fuck up and let me talk to you.”

Knute could hear Tom yelling from his bed, “What in the Sam Hill is going on down there? What broke?!”

And then she left. She ran out of the house and out of the town and past the sign she was supposed to be painting and she just kept running down the highway.

“Hello, sweetheart,” said Hosea from his desk. He saw Knute’s note and smiled. “How are you?”

“Oh, you know, fat,” said Lorna over the phone. “And green.”

“Fat and green?” asked Hosea.

“Pretty much, yeah. I’m hideous.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I feel hideous,” said Lorna. “How are you?”

“Well, I’m fat, too,” said Hosea. “Fat and white. I’m wearing shorts.”

“Well, it’s hot enough,” said Lorna.

“What are you wearing?” asked Hosea.

“Nothing,” said Lorna.

Hosea smiled. “Really?”

“No,” said Lorna, “I’m wearing shorts, too, with a panel.”

“A panel?” asked Hosea.

“Stretchy stuff in the front, maternity shorts.”

“Oh,” said Hosea, “I should get a pair.”

Lorna laughed. “I don’t really need them yet, I’m just trying them out. How’s the plan?”

Hosea cleared his throat. “Remember when I told you that Veronica Epp had left with her triplets?”

“Yeah,” said Lorna.

“That’s actually a shitty thing,” said Hosea.

“But it brings it down to one person, doesn’t it?” she asked.

“Yeah, but it’s shitty for Gord and her other children.”

“I guess it would be,” said Lorna. “But, you know, it might be good for Veronica. Anyway, Hosea, it’s not your fault, you know.”

“I wish I didn’t feel so happy about it.”

“You’re not happy about that,” said Lorna. “About her leaving, specifically. You’re happy that the numbers have gone down enough so that Algren might be the smallest town and you’ll get to meet your dad.”

Lorna was quiet.

“You’re laughing, aren’t you?” asked Hosea.

“No, of course not.”

“Lorna!” said Hosea.

“Well, okay, I am, but c’mon, Hosea, what do you expect?”

Hosea thought for a second. “I don’t know,” he said. He wanted to beg Lorna never to leave him. He wanted her to promise she would never leave him sitting heartbroken on the front step. He wanted her to promise she would never take their baby away from him. “The water tower looks great, though,” he said. “It’s perfect.”

“Is the horse on yet?” asked Lorna.

“Almost. Hey,” he said, remembering the favour he needed to ask of Lorna. “Do you think you could buy one of those backgammon-type briefcases for me and bring it out when you come on the thirtieth?”

All right, okay, thought Hosea as he popped an Emmylou Harris tape into his car deck. That’s taken care of. They’d made arrangements that Lorna would come out on the thirtieth with a bag of clothes and the backgammon briefcase, and after the first they’d move the rest of her stuff into Hosea’s place. Their place. “Huhhhhhhh,” said Hosea, expelling a giant breath of relief. One more’s gotta go. Just one more. I’m happy, thought Hosea. He thought of Gord on his front step. Am I happy or am I sad? he thought. I don’t know which to choose.