Kent Haruf - Plainsong

The boys were bored right away. Their mother had seemed better, but after the silent spells began she appeared defeated again and went back to bed, and their aunt told them they must be quiet and let her rest. This was after she’d gone into their mother’s room one evening and they’d talked for an hour behind the closed door, and then she had come back out and said, You will have to be quiet and let her rest.

We have been quiet.

Are you arguing with me.

What’s wrong with Mother?

Your mother is not strong.

So their aunt went to work and their mother went back to bed lying with her arm folded over her eyes in a darkened room, and they were left alone in the seventh-floor apartment in Denver and were told strictly not to go outside. They spent their time reading a little and they watched tv until they were blind, while still being careful at the critical hour not to interfere with the taping of their aunt’s soap opera. Their only recourse was the balcony at the front of the apartment, which they entered by sliding back a glass door. It overlooked Logan Street and the sidewalk and there were cars parked all along the curbing and they could see into the tops of the leafless winter trees. They began to go out on the balcony to watch the cars go by in the street and to see people walking their dogs. They put their coats on and stayed for longer and longer periods of time. After a while they took to dropping things off the balcony. They started by leaning over the rail to watch what the wind did with their spittle, then they made up a game to see who could sail scraps of paper the farthest, floating the paper like feathers, and they invented a system of points for distance and placement. But that was too unpredictable. Wind had too much to do with it. They found that dropping things that had weight was better. And eggs were best.

After this had gone on for a couple of days someone in the building told their aunt about it. When she came into the apartment that evening she removed her coat and hung it up, and then she took them both by the wrist and led them into their mother’s room. Do you know what these two have been doing?

Their mother leaned up in bed. No, she said. She looked pale and drawn again. But it couldn’t be very bad, she said.

They’ve been smashing eggs on the sidewalk.

How?

Dropping them off the balcony. Oh, it’s very intelligent.

Have you? she said, looking in their faces.

They stood looking at her impassively. Their aunt was still holding their wrists.

Yes, they have.

Well, I’m sure they won’t do it anymore. There’s too little for them to do up here.

They can’t do that anymore. I won’t have it.

So that was the end of that. They were forbidden to go out onto the balcony.

At the end of the week they woke one night in the dark and discovered that their mother wasn’t in the room. They opened the door and went out into the living room. No lights were on, but the curtain was drawn back from the glass balcony door and the lights of the city came in through the glass. Their mother was sitting on the davenport with a blanket wrapped around her. Though she was awake, so far as they could see, she wasn’t doing anything.

Mother?

What is it? she said. What woke you?

We wondered where you were.

I’m just out here, she said. It’s all right. Go back to bed.

Can’t we sit here with you?

If you want. It’s cool out here though.

I’ll get a blanket, Ike said.

But you won’t like it, their mother said. I’m not very good company.

Mother, can’t you come home again? Bobby said. What good is it here?

No. Not yet, she said.

When?

I don’t know, she said. I’m not sure. Here. Slide closer. You’re getting cold. I should make you go back to bed. They sat for a long time watching out the window.

The boys were glad the next day when their father returned to pick them up. They wanted to go home again, but they felt confused and uneasy about leaving their mother in Denver in the apartment with her sister. Guthrie tried to make them talk on the way back. They wouldn’t say very much of anything, though. They didn’t want to be disloyal to their mother. The trip seemed to take a long time. Once they were in the house upstairs in their own bedroom it was better. They could look out and see the corral and windmill and horse barn.

There was no school between Christmas and New Year’s. Victoria Roubideaux stayed out in the country in the old house back off the county road with the McPheron brothers, and the days seemed slow. The ground was covered in thin dirty patches of ice and the weather stayed cold, the temperature never rising above freezing, and in the night it was bitterly cold. She stayed inside the house and read popular magazines and baked in the kitchen, while the brothers came and went from the house, haying cattle and chopping ice in the stock tanks, paying close attention all the time to the steady advance of pregnancy in the two-year-old heifers, since they would be the most trouble during calving, and returned to the kitchen from the farm lots and pastures, ice-bound and half frozen, with their blue eyes watery and their cheeks as red as if they had been burnt. In the house Christmas had been quiet and there were no particular plans for New Year’s.

By the middle of the week the girl had begun to spend long hours in her room, sleeping late in the morning and staying up at night listening to the radio and fixing her hair, reading about babies, thinking, fiddling in a notebook.

The McPheron brothers didn’t know what to make of this behavior. They had grown accustomed to her school-week routine, when she had gotten up and eaten breakfast with them every morning and then gone to school on the bus and afterward had come home from her classes and was often out in the parlor reading another magazine or watching television when they came in for the evening. They had begun to talk more easily with her and to rehearse together the happenings of the passing days, finding the threads of things that interested them all. So it bothered them now that she’d begun to spend so many hours by herself. They didn’t know what she was doing in her room, but they didn’t want to ask her either. They didn’t think it was their right to ask or query her. So instead they began to worry.

Late in the week, driving back to the house in the pickup in the evening, Harold said, Don’t Victoria seem kind of sorry and miserable to you lately?

Yes. I’ve noted it.

Because she stays in bed too late. That’s one thing.

Maybe they do, Raymond said. Young girls might all do like that, by their natures.

Till nine-thirty in the morning? I went back into the house for something the other day and she was just getting up.

I don’t know, Raymond said. He looked out over the rattling hood of the pickup. I reckon she’s just getting bored and lonesome.

Maybe, Harold said. But if she is, I don’t know if that’s good for the baby.

What isn’t good for the baby?

Feeling lonesome and sorry like that. That can’t be good for him. On top of staying up all manner of hours and sleeping all morning.

Well, Raymond said. She needs her sleep.

She needs her regular sleep. That’s what she needs. She needs regular hours.

How do you know that?

I don’t know that, Harold said, not for a certified fact. But you take a two-year-old heifer that’s carrying a calf. She’s not up all night long, restless, moving around, is she.

What are you talking about? Raymond said. How in hell does that apply to anything?

I started thinking about it the other day. The similarities amongst em. Both of them is young. Both of them’s out in the country with only us here to watch out for em. Both is carrying a baby for the first time. Just think about it.