Kent Haruf - Our Souls at Night

During the day she had cleaned her house thoroughly and had clean sheets on the bed upstairs and had bathed and eaten a sandwich for supper. As the day faded, she sat in the living room, quiet, motionless, thinking, waiting till Louis should come to the door and knock as it turned dark.

Finally he came and she let him in. She could see something was different. What’s wrong? she said.

I’ll tell you in a minute. Can we have a drink first?

Of course.

They went to the kitchen and she gave him a bottle of beer and poured wine for herself. She looked at him, waiting.

We’re no secret anymore, he said. If we ever were.">Why not?

How do you know? What happened?

You know Dorlan Becker.

He used to own the men’s store.

Yes. He sold it and stayed in town. Everybody thought he’d move somewhere else. He never seemed to like it here. He goes down to Arizona for the winters.

What’s that have to do with our secret being out?

He’s one of the people I meet with at the bakery a couple times a month. Today he wanted to know how I had so much energy. Being out all night and then to do what I normally do in the daytime.

What did you say?

I told him he was getting the reputation of a gossip and a liar. I got mad. I didn’t handle it right. I’m still mad about it.

I can tell.

I should’ve just ignored it and defused it. But I didn’t. I didn’t want them thinking anything bad about you.

Let it go, Louis. We knew from the start that people would find out. We talked about it.

Yes, but I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t want them making up a story about us. About you.

I appreciate that. But they can’t hurt me. I’m going to enjoy our nights together. For as long as they last.

He looked at her. Why do you say it that way? You sound like I did the other day. Don’t you think they’ll last? For a good while?

I hope so, she said. I told you I don’t want to live like that anymore — for other people, what they think, what they believe. I don’t think it’s the way to live. It isn’t for me anyway.

I was raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, she said. We lived out on the northeast side of town. We had a nice two-story clapboard house. My father was a businessman and did well and my mother was a very good housekeeper and a good cook. It was a middle-class sort of neighborhood, a working-class neighborhood. I had one sister. We didn’t get along. She was more active and more outgoing, with a kind of gregarious nature that I didn’t have. I was quiet, bookish. After high school I went to the university and lived at home and took the bus downtown to my classes. I started off studying French but swZeid his handitched to elementary school education.

Then I met Carl in my sophomore year and we started dating and by the time I turned twenty I was pregnant.

Were you scared?

Not of the baby. No. Not of having one. But I didn’t know how we would manage. Carl still had a year and a half to get his degree. On Christmas Day he joined me at my parents’ house — he lived in Omaha — and together we both told my parents after dinner, all of us sitting in the living room. My mother just started crying. My father was angry. I thought you knew better. He stared at Carl. What in hell’s wrong with you. Nothing’s wrong with him, I said. It just happened. Well it didn’t by God just happen. He made it happen. There were two of us involved, Daddy. Well my God, he said.

We got married in January and moved into a tiny dark apartment in downtown Lincoln and I got a temporary job clerking in a department store and we waited. The baby came one night in May. They wouldn’t let Carl in the room. Then we took the baby home and were happy and very poor.

Didn’t your parents help you?

Not much. Carl didn’t want their help. Well, I didn’t either.

That was your daughter, then. I didn’t think she was that old.

Yes, that was Connie.

I only remember her vaguely. I know how she died.

Yes. Addie stopped talking and moved in the bed. I’ll talk about that some other time. I’ll just tell you now that when Carl graduated we both wanted to come to Colorado. We’d gone to Estes Park once for a short vacation and liked the mountains and needed to get out of Lincoln and away from everything. And start up somewhere new. Carl got a job selling insurance in Longmont and we lived there for a couple of years, then old Mr. Gorland here in Holt decided to retire and so we borrowed money and moved here and Carl took over his insurance office and his clients. And we’ve been here ever since. That was in 1970.

How was it that you got pregnant?

What do you mean? How does anybody get pregnant?

Well, my memory is we were all pretty careful and nervous back then.

But we were young too. Carl and I were in love. It’s the old story. It was all new and exciting.

It must have been.

She let go of his hand and moved farther away and lay straight in bed. He turned and looked at her in the dim light.

Why are you acting like this? she said. What’s the matter?

I don’t know.

Are you asking about the circumstances?

I guess.

About the sex?

I’m being more stupid than usual. I just feel sort of jealous and I don’t know what.

Out in the country on a dirt road in the back seat in the dark. Is that what you want to know?

I’d appreciate it if you would just call me a goddamn son of a bitch, Louis said. A man too foolish for words.note { font-size:0.9em; text-align: left; padding-left:2 %; text-plop

All right. You’re a foolish son of a bitch.

Thank you, he said.

You’re welcome. But you could ruin this. You know that. Is there anything else?

Did your parents ever get over it?

It turned out they >

Addie drove her car into the alley behind her neighbor Ruth’s house, got out and went up to the back door. The old lady was waiting, sitting in a chair on the porch. She was eighty-two years old. She stood up when Addie arrived and the two women came slowly down the steps, Ruth holding on to Addie’s arm, and came out to the car and Addie helped her in and waited for her to arrange her thin legs and feet and then she fastened the seatbelt and shut the door. They drove to the grocery store on the highway at the southeast side of town. There were only a few cars in the parking lot, a slow summer’s midmorning. They went in and Ruth held on to the shopping cart and they moved slowly through the aisles, looking, taking their time. She didn’t want or need much, just cans or cartons of food, and a loaf of bread and a bag of little Hershey bars in foil. Aren’t you going to get anything? she said.

No, Addie said. I shopped the other day. I’ll just get some milk.

I shouldn’t eat this chocolate but what difference does it make now. I’m going to eat whatever I want to.

She put canned soup and stew in her cart and boxes of frozen dinners and a couple of boxes of dry cereal and a quart of milk and some strawberry preserves.

Is that everything?

I believe so.

Don’t you want some fruit?

I don’t want fresh fruit. It’ll just spoil. They went around to the canned fruit and she took down two cans of peaches in their sweet syrup and some canned pears, then a box of oatmeal cookies with raisins. At the cash register the clerk looked at the old lady and said, Did you find everything, Mrs. Joyce? Everything you wanted?

I didn’t find me a good man. I didn’t see one of them on the shelf. No, I couldn’t find any good man back there.

Couldn’t you? Well, sometimes they’re closer to home than you think. She glanced quickly at Addie standing next to the old lpage_top_padding" id="oun s.ady.