Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

“I’ve never been invited to the Stark home,” Maideen said, and I began to smile. I felt curiously lighthearted. Lilies must have been in bloom somewhere near, and I took a full breath of their water smell as determinedly as if then consciousness might go, or might not.

Out in the front hall, Jinny stood with her legs apart, cutting off locks of her hair at the mirror. The locks fell at her feet. She had on boy’s shorts. She looked up at me and said “How do you like it?” She grinned, as if she had been preparing for me, and then she looked past my shoulder. She would know, with her quickness like foreknowledge, that I would come back when this summer got too much for me, and that I would just as soon bring a stranger if I could find one, somebody who didn’t know a thing, into the house with me when I came.

I remember Maideen looked down at her gloves, and seemed to decide to keep them on. Jinny hollered at Tellie to bring in some cokes. A spell of remoteness, a feeling of lightness, had hold of me still, and as we all stood on that thin light matting in the Stark hall that seems to billow a little if you take a step, and with Jinny’s hair lying on it, I saw us all in the mirror. And I could almost hear it being told right across me — our story, the fragment of what happened, Jinny’s and my story, as if it were being told — told in the clear voice of Maideen, rushing, unquestioning — the town words. Oh, this is what Maideen Summers was — telling what she looked at, repeating what she listened to — she was like an outlandish little bird, being taught, some each day, to sing a song people made… He walked out on her and moved three blocks away down the street. Now everybody’s wondering when he’ll try to go back. They say Jinny MacLain’s got her sweetheart there. Under her mama’s nose. Good thing her father’s dead and she has no brothers. Sure, it’s Lonnie Dugan, the other one at the bank, and you knew from the start, if it wasn’t Ran, who else in Sabina would there be for Jinny Stark? They don’t say how it happened, does anybody know? At the circle, at the table, at Mrs. Judge’s, at Sunday School, they say, they say she will marry the sweetheart if he’ll marry her, but Ran will kill someone if she does. And there’s Ran’s papa died of drink, remember, remember? They say Ran will do something bad. He won’t divorce her but he will do something bad. Maybe kill them all. They say Jinny’s not scared. And oh you know, they say, they run into each other every day of the world, all three. Poor things! But it’s no surprise. There’ll be no surprises. How could they help it if they wanted to help it, how could you get away from anything here? You can’t get away in Sabina. Away from anything.

Maideen held the tinkling glass in her white glove and said to Jinny, “I look too tacky and mussed when I work all day to be coming in anybody’s strange house.”

She looked like Jinny —she was an awkward version of Jinny. Jinny, “I look too tacky and mussed when I work all day to be always revealed contamination. I knew it after the fact, so to speak — and was just a bit pleased with myself.” I don’t mean there was anything of mockery in Maideen’s little face — no — but something of Jinny that went back early — to whatever original and young my Jinny would never be now. The breeze from that slow ceiling fan lifted their hair from their temples, like the same hand — Maideen’s brown hair long and Jinny’s brown hair short, ruined — she ruined it herself, as she liked doing.

Maideen was so still, so polite, but she glowed with something she didn’t know about, there in the room with Jinny. She took on a great deal of unsuspected value. It was like a kind of maturity all at once. They sat down in wicker chairs and talked to each other. With them side by side and talking back and forth, it seemed to reward my soul for Maideen to protest her fitness to be in the house. I would not have minded how bedraggled she would ever get herself. I relaxed, leaned back in my chair and smoked cigarettes. But I had to contain my sudden interest; it seemed almost too funny to be true, their resemblance. I was delighted with myself, most of all, to have been the one to make it evident. I looked from Jinny to Maideen (of course she didn’t guess) and back to Jinny and almost expected praise — praise from somewhere — for my true vision.

There were knocking sounds from outside — croquet again. Jinny was guiding us to the open door (we walked on her hair) where they were slowly moving across the shade of the backyard — Doc Short, Vera and Red Lassiter, and the two same schoolteachers — with Lonnie Dugan striking a ball through the wicket. I watched through the doorway and the crowd seemed to have dwindled a little. I could not think who was out. It was myself.

Mother said, Son, you’re walking around in a dream .

Bella, Mrs. Judge O’Leary’s little dog, panted sorrowfully all the time — she was sick. I always went out in the yard and spoke to her. Poor Bella, how do you do, lady? Is it hot, do they leave you alone?

Mother said, Where have you been, son? — Not anywhere, mother. — I wish you wouldn’t look so peaked. And you keep things from me, son. — I haven’t been anywhere, where would I go? — If you came back with me, everything would be just like it was before. I know you won’t eat at Mrs. Judge’s table, not her biscuit .

When the bank opened, Miss Callie Hudson came up to my window and hollered, Randall, when are you coming back to your precious wife? You forgive her, now, you hear? That’s no way to do, bear grudges. Your mother never bore your father a grudge in her life, and he made her life right hard, I tell you, how do you suppose he made her life? She didn’t bear him a grudge. We’re all human on earth. Where’s little old Lonnie, now, has he stepped out, or you done something to him? I still think of him as a boy in knee breeches and Buster Brown bob, riding the ice wagon, stealing ice — your lifelong playmate, Jinny’s lifelong playmate — a little common but so smart. Ah, I’m a woman that’s been clear around the world in my rocking chair, and I tell you we all get surprises now and then. But you march on back to your wife, Ran MacLain. You hear? It’s a thing of the flesh, not the spirit, it’ll pass. Jinny’ll get over this in three, four months maybe. You hear me? And you go back nice . No striking about now and doing anything we’ll all be shamed to hear about. I know you won’t. I knew your father, was crazy about your father, just as long as he could recognize me, love your mother. Sweetest people in the world, most happily mated people in the world. Go home and tell your mother I said so. And you march back to that precious wife. March back and have you some chirren. How long has it been? How long? What day was it you tore the house down, Christmas or Easter? I said Easter, Mr. Hudson said Christmas — who was right? My Circle declares she’ll get a divorce and marry Lonnie but I say not. Thing of the flesh, I told Mr. Hudson. Won’t last. And they’ve known each other a hundred years! The Missionary Circle said you’d kill him and I said, You all, who are you talking about? If it’s Ran MacLain that I knew in his buggy, I said he’s the last person I know to take on to that extent. I laughed. And little Jinny. I had to laugh at her. Says — I couldn’t help it. I says, How did it happen, Jinny, tell old Miss Callie, you monkey, and she says, Oh Miss Callie, I don’t know — it just happened, she says, sort of across the bridge table. I says across the bridge table my foot. Jinny told me yesterday on the street, Oh, she says, I just saw Ran. I hope Ran won’t cherish it against me, Jinny says. I have to write my checks on the Sabina Bank, and Lonnie Dugan works in it, right next to Ran. And we’re all grown up, not little children any more. And I says I know, how could you get away from each other if you tried, you could not. It’s an endless circle. That’s what a thing of the flesh is. And you won’t get away from that in Sabina or hope to. Even our little town. Jinny was never scared of the Devil himself as a growing girl, and shouldn’t be now. And Lonnie Dugan won’t ever quit at the bank, will he? Can’t quit. But as I said to Mr. Hudson — they’re in separate cages . All right, I said to Mr. Hudson, look. Jinny was unfaithful to Ran — that’s what it was . There you have what it’s all about . That’s the brunt of it. Face it, I told Mr. Hudson. You’re a train man — just a station agent, you’re out of things. I don’t know how many times .