Kent Haruf - Our Souls at Night

How much is it? Ruth said.

The clerk told her.

Your blouse has a spot on it, Ruth said. It’s not clean. You shouldn’t come to work dressed like that.

The clerk looked down. I don’t see anything.

It’s there.

She took her money from her old soft leather purse and slowly counted out the money in her hand and laid the bills and coins on the counter in neat order.

Then they went out to the car and Addie put the groceries in the back seat and got in.

Ruth was looking straight ahead at the highway, where the cars and cattle trucks and grain trucks were going by. Sometimes I hate this place, she said. Sometimes I wish I had gotten out of here when I could. These small-town small-minded pissants, she said.

You’re talking about that clerk.

Her, yes, and everybody like her.

Do you know her?

She’s one of the Coxes. Her mother was just the same. Thought she knew everybody’s business. Had a mouth like this one. She makes me want to give her a good slap.

So you know about Louis and me, Addie said.

I get up early every morning. I can’t sleep. And I sit out in the front room watching the sun come up over the houses across the street. I see Louis in the morning going home.

I knew somebody would see him. It doesn’t matter.

I hope you’re having a good time.

He’s a good man. Don’t you think?

I think so. But the returns aren’nt" id="p32" a

Addie said, Tell me about the other woman.

Who do you mean?

The one you had an affair with.

You know about that?

Everybody does.

She was married, Louis said. Tamara. That was her name. It still is if she’s still alive. Her husband was a nurse, working nights { text-art doesn’t matter at the hospital here in town. It was unusual for a man to be a nurse back then. People didn’t know what to make of it. They had a little girl about four years old, a year older than Holly. A little tough thin blond girl. Her father, Tamara’s husband, was a big sort of heavyset blond guy. He was a good guy, really. He wanted to write stories. I guess he wrote some at night at the hospital. They’d had some trouble before and she’d had an affair with somebody back in Ohio. She was a teacher in the high school like I was. I’d been there only two years when she got hired.

What did she teach?

She was one of the English teachers too. The freshmen and sophomore classes. Basic stuff.

You taught the upper-level courses.

Yes, I’d been there longer. Well, so she was unhappy at home and Diane and I weren’t doing so well either.

Why not?

Because of me, mostly. But both of us too. We couldn’t talk. We’d get in a fight or an argument and she’d start crying and leave the room and wouldn’t finish what we were talking or fighting about. That made it worse.

Then at school one of you made some kind of a move, some gesture, Addie said.

Yes. She put her hand on my arm when we were alone in the teachers’ break room. Are you going to say something to me? she said. Like what? I said. Like do you want to go out for a drink or something? I don’t know, I said. Do you want me to? What do you think? That was in April, the middle of April. I was doing our taxes for the year and on the fifteenth, after supper I took the tax returns to the post office to get them mailed on time, and I drove by her house and I could see her sitting at the dining-room table grading papers, and so I parked down the street and came up on her porch and knocked and she came to the door. She was already in her bathrobe. Are you alone? I said.

Pamela’s here but she’s in bed already. Why don’t you come in?

So I went in.

That’s how it started?

Yes, on tax day. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it.

I don’t know. These things happen in all kinds of ways.

You know something about this.

I know something about how these things happen in people’s lives.

Will you tell me?

Maybe. Someday. So what did you do?

I left Diane and Holly and moved in with her. Her husband moved out, stayed with a friend. And well, we got along for a couple of weeks. She was a beautiful hard wild woman, with long brown hair and brown eyes that were kind of like an animal’s eyes in bed, and she had lovely skin, like satin. Her body was pretty thin.

You’re still in love with her.

No. But I think I’m in love a little with the memory of her. Of course it got bad in the end. One night her husband came over when we were eating supper in the kitchen. Tamara and her little girl and me. We sat there at the table talking with her husband like we were all advanced and sophisticated and that we were people who would just break up m somebody else37Klearriages and go on like free people. But I couldn’t go on. I was sick of myself. Her husband there at the table and she and the little girl. I got up and left the house and drove out in the country, the stars were all shining and there were the farmlights and yardlights all looking blue in the dark. Everything looking normal, except nothing was normal anymore, everything was at some kind of cliff’s edge, and late that night I came back. She was in bed reading. I can’t do this, I said.

Are you leaving?

I have to. This is going to hurt too many people. It has already. And here I am trying to be a father to your daughter while my own is growing up without me. I have to go back because of her, if for no other reason.

When are you leaving?

This weekend.

Then come to bed now, she said. We have two more nights.

I remember those nights. How it was.

Don’t tell me about them. I don’t want to know.

No. I won’t tell about them. When I was leaving I just cried. She did too.

Then what?

I went back to Diane and Holly and moved back in the house and lived downstairs and slept on the couch. Diane was pretty quiet about it. She was never vindictive or nasty or mean about any of it. She could see I felt like hell. And I don’t think she wanted to lose me or lose the life we had.

Then in the summer one of my old college friends came out from Chicago and wanted to go fishing and I drove him up to the White Forest above Glenwood Springs, but he didn’t like it, he wasn’t used to the mountains. When I took him down a steep trail to a creek, he was afraid we were lost. We caught some nice fish too, but it didn’t matter. We drove back to Holt and Diane met me at the door. Holly was sleeping, taking her afternoon nap, and we went to bed immediately, it just caught us that way, maybe the best time of any, that kind of unthinking urgency, while my friend was waiting for us downstairs to eat supper. And that was it.

You never saw her again?

I didn’t. But she came back to Holt. She’d moved to Texas at the end of the school year and taken a job down there. Then she came back to Holt and called me. Diane took the calover it. People do.

It was her. Tamara. I’m here in town. Will you see me?

I can’t. No. I can’t do that.

You won’t see me again?

I can’t.

Diane was out in the kitchen listening. But it wasn’t that. I’d made up my mind. I had to stay with her and our daughter.

Then what?

Tamara went back down to Texas and started teaching where she had accepted the job. And Diane let me stay.

Where is she now?

I don’t know where she is. She and her husband never got back together. So there was that too. I don’t like to think about my part in that. She was from back east. Massachusetts. Maybe she’s back there.

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No.

I still think you’re in love with her.

I’m not in love with her.

It sounds like you are.