Kent Haruf - Plainsong

I’ll do it again. You better get out of here.

I will. If you just step out for a minute, I’ll leave.

He stood still, waiting. His eyes were wild. It’s at the bank, he said. You’ll never touch it in your life.

What? No. If you’ll just step back.

I have it. Not you. You don’t have the key.

Yes, I know. But just wait outside. Just for a minute. Will you do that?

Why should I?

I want to dry my face.

He looked at her. I can’t take much more of this, he said. He surveyed the bathroom, his eyes still wild and red. At last he shuffled his feet, backing out.

Immediately she locked the door and he stayed outside, muttering. She could hear him guarding the door, waiting for her. For an hour she stayed in the bathroom. She put the lid down and sat down on the toilet and held toilet paper to her nose and all the time she could hear him talking and arguing in the hallway. It sounded as though he had seated himself against the wall.

. . .

He was still there when Maggie Jones came home after eleven. She came into the hall and found him sitting on the floor. Oh, Dad, she said. What have you done?

She’s in there, he said. I got her trapped. But she won’t come out.

Mrs. Jones? the girl called. Is that you?

That’s her, he said. That’s her yapping in there.

Dad, Maggie Jones said, she lives here. That’s Victoria. Don’t you remember? She turned toward the door. Honey, are you okay?

I don’t know what I did, the girl said through the door. I don’t know what upset him.

I know. It’s all right. I know you didn’t do anything, honey.

She wants my key. That’s what she wants.

No, now Dad. That’s not so. You know it isn’t. Come on. Let’s get you to bed.

That’s what they all want.

She raised her old father by the arm and led him back to his room. He came along docilely now. She helped him out of his clothes and removed his shoes and set them on the floor beside the bed and he stood naked in the hot room, his arms at his sides, his skin sagging at the elbows and knees, his thighs as skinny as sticks. His old gray buttocks had fallen forlornly. He stood like a child waiting for what she would do next. She helped him step into his pajamas and buttoned his top, then he lay down in the bed. She covered him with the blankets.

Dad, she said. She brushed his wispy hair flat on his head. You can’t do that again. Please. You can’t. Listen to me now.

Do what? he said.

Please, she said. Just don’t do that. That girl has enough trouble.

She can’t get to it anyway.

No. Hush now. We’ll talk in the morning. Try to sleep. She bent and kissed him and held her face against his cheek for a long while. He began to relax. She smoothed her hand over his eyes and he closed them. She continued to caress his face. At last he was asleep. Then she went back into the hall. She found the girl in the makeshift bedroom at the back of the house, standing at the dresser. The girl looked large-eyed and very tired and pale in the long white nightgown. Just a young high school girl with dark hair, with something swollen beginning to show at her stomach.

Did he hurt you? Maggie Jones said.

Not really, the girl said.

You’re sure you’re all right?

I’m okay. But Mrs. Jones. I think I have to go someplace else. He doesn’t like me.

Honey, he doesn’t even know you.

He scares me. I don’t know what to do.

Can you stay with a friend?

I don’t know who, the girl said. I don’t like to ask.

Go to bed then, honey, Maggie Jones said. I’m here now.

In the afternoon they sat on their bikes at the curb on Chicago Street directly across the way, looking at it. A little pale stucco house no bigger than a cottage, standing back behind three low elms that grew in the front yard, one of the trees with a long weep of sap from upwards in its trunk where a limb had been taken off. A sidewalk led to the front door. It was a little rental house, one story and no basement, in this country where most houses had basements or root cellars, and it was faded to a dim green with a gray shingled roof and even though they knew she was inside it looked empty and unlived in. Beyond the windows there was no movement. They watched for a long while.

Then they crossed the street walking their bikes and stopped and looked at it again, put down their kickstands and parked the bikes on the sidewalk and walked up to the front door. Go on, Bobby said.

Ike tapped on the unvarnished wood door.

She won’t even hear that, Bobby said.

Then you do it.

Bobby looked away.

All right then.

Ike tapped again, only slightly louder, and they waited, staring at the door. Behind them the street was quiet and without traffic. When they no longer expected anything from inside, the door swung inward slowly and there was their mother. She stood in the doorway looking at them with dull lusterless eyes. She looked bad now. She appeared to be completely worn out. They could see that. She had been a pretty woman with soft brown hair and slim arms and a thin waist. But now she looked sick. Her eyes were sunken behind dark circles and her face was pasty-looking, thin and drawn, as if for days she’d fogotten to eat or as if nothing she brought to her mouth tasted good enough anymore, even to take in and chew and swallow. She was still wearing a bathrobe in the middle of the afternoon and her hair was flattened against one side of her head.

Yes, she said. Her voice was dry and flat, without inflection.

Hello, Mother.

Is something wrong? She cupped one hand over her eyes against the bright afternoon sun.

We just wanted to see you. They felt embarrassed and they turned away, looking back across the empty street toward the spot at the curb from which they had watched the house.

Did you want to come in? she said.

If you don’t care.

They followed her into the little front room where at any time, day or night, her clothes had been discarded and dropped over the anonymous furniture and where dishes from the kitchen, coffee cups and saucers and bowls of shrinking drying food, had been put down at random on the bare rug.

I wasn’t expecting anyone, she said.

She sat down on the couch and drew her feet up under her. The boys were still standing.

Can’t you find a place to sit?

They seated themselves on the two wood chairs opposite the couch and looked in her direction and after the first time they didn’t look at her eyes again. She was playing with the belt of her bathrobe, wrapping it around one finger and then unwrapping it. Her pale legs, the pale shins and her yellowish sallow feet, were visible beneath the hem of her robe.

Did your father send you here? she said.

No, Ike said. He didn’t send us.

He doesn’t even know we came, Bobby said.

Does he ask about me?

We talk about you, Ike said.

What do you say?

We say we miss you. We wonder how you are.

We wonder how you’re doing all alone in this new house, Bobby said.

I appreciate that, she said. Knowing that much makes me feel better. She looked across the room. How is he?

Dad?

Yes.

He’s okay.

I understand he stays out all the time now.

He goes out at night sometimes after we’re in bed, Ike said.

Where does he go?

We don’t know.

Doesn’t he tell you?

No.

I don’t like that, she said. She examined her hands, the ends of her long slender shapely fingers. He must think I’m crazy now. That I’ve gone over the other side. He must think that about me. She looked up. Did you know he doesn’t want me to come back anymore. Even if I wanted to. He told me as much.

We want you to come back, Mother.