Lori Ostlund - The Bigness of the World

“Touch them,” her father says, his voice gentle but urgent. “It’s okay. I want you to. You won’t hurt me.”

Already the cuts have risen up in angry welts around the stitches, which she studies carefully, thinking about the fact that they were put there by someone she does not even know, a stranger who held her father’s wrists and created these precise, black marks. There are nine of them, she notes, four on the right wrist, five on the left, and as she places a small finger against each of them, one by one, she closes her eyes and tries to imagine that they are something else, the stitching on a baseball, for example. She loves baseball, not the sport in its entirety but playing catch, which she and her father do together regularly in the park. Her father throws the ball so hard that her hand stings each time she catches it, which she usually does, and sometimes her palm aches for days afterward, though she would never tell her father this. Still, even with her eyes closed, she cannot really pretend that she is touching a baseball because her father’s skin is warm and soft and she can feel his pulse, a slight, rhythmic quivering that means that he is still hers.

Later, when her mother comes home, Annabel hears the two of them arguing, her mother saying, “What is wrong with you? She’s a child, Max. A child.” Annabel is only nine, but she already understands about her mother, knows, for example, that her mother would be angry to learn that Annabel and her father spent the afternoon inspecting his wrists, and so Annabel would never think to tell her this. She cannot help but wonder how it is that her father, who is an adult after all, does not understand such things.

The next day when she arrives home from school, her father is sitting barebacked on the sofa. She knows what this means, that the maggots have returned and are writhing just beneath his skin, making him twitchy and unable to sit still, just as she knows that even the merest brush of cloth against his skin riles the maggots even more. He has explained all of this to her many times, but she cannot actually imagine how such a thing feels, though she knows that it must be awful. His neck is bothered most by the maggots, and when he is forced to put on a shirt — in order to greet her mother or to go outdoors — he shrugs his shoulders repeatedly and tugs incessantly at the neckline until it dips, like a very relaxed cowl, to his belly button.

“The maggots?” she asks quietly, standing next to the sofa with her book bag still strapped to her back.

“Yes,” he answers wearily.

“Are they bad?”

“It’s all I can think about,” he tells her. “Your mother doesn’t understand, of course. Do you know what she tells me? She tells me to just not think about it.” He laughs when he says this, in a way that invites her to join in, to find humor in her mother’s insensitivity. He has told her this before, many times, explaining that it is because her mother grew up in Minnesota, where they prize something called stoicism.

“What is stoicism ?” she had asked him once.

“Well,” he had said, thinking for a moment. “It’s like this. Let’s say that your mother and I are out taking a walk and I get a pebble in my shoe. What would I do?”

“Take it out,” she had suggested, her voice rising faintly at the end so that her words occupied the space between statement and question, but her father had ignored her uncertainty.

“That’s right,” he said. “Of course. I would take it out. Any normal person would. Now, what would your mother do?”

To be honest, she did not know what her mother would do, but she felt that it would disappoint her father were she to admit this, and so, because she understood the direction in which he was nudging her, she said, “Leave it.”

“Right again. Because your mother likes to suffer, Annabel. She likes to feel that pebble in her shoe. And then, at the end of the walk, do you know what your mother would do?” He had become more excited, warming to his explanation, not really expecting her to answer. “She would tell me about the pebble. She would say, ‘Max, I’ve had this pebble in my shoe the whole time we’ve been walking, and it’s really starting to hurt.’ ” When he said this, his voice changed, becoming higher like her mother’s voice and drawing out the o ’s as he did when he teased her mother about being from Minnesota. “She would expect me to feel sorry for her, but I wouldn’t, of course. I’d tell her, ‘Well, sit down and take the damn thing out.’ And you know what she’d say then? She’d say, ‘Oh, never mind, Max. It’s okay. We’re almost home anyway.’ ”

He had paused then, eyes closed, clasping his hands in front of him as her grandparents did when they prayed before eating, but Annabel knew that her father was not praying. He did not believe in it. After a moment, his breathing slowed, and he opened his eyes and said, “You see, Annabel, your mother needs that pebble. She wouldn’t know what to do without it. You can see that, can’t you, Annabel?” His tone was fierce, beseeching her, his face glowing red, the way it used to when he came in from gardening, back when they had a garden, back when they had a house.

She had nodded, though she’d never seen pebbles in her mother’s shoes, had not even heard her mother mention pebbles. “You need to be on your guard, honey. Okay?” he said. “Because if your mother has her way, you’ll be walking around with a pebble in your shoe, too.” He breathed in deeply through his nostrils, as though the air were very fresh and only now could he enjoy it.

* * *

On Saturdays, Annabel and her mother visit her grandparents. Her father does not go along, even though they are his parents, because he says that they stare at him. During these visits, her grandfather and grandmother both sit in their recliners, which have been placed up on cinder blocks so that when they stand, they do not have to hoist themselves upward in a way that would strain their hips. She and her mother sit on a floral sofa across from them, and Annabel feels self-conscious because there is a picture of Jesus hanging right above her, which means that when her grandparents look at her, they are seeing Jesus as well. They generally talk about uninteresting topics such as what songs were performed on Lawrence Welk during the week’s reruns and how many times they saw the retired barber who lives across the street mowing his lawn. Once, he mowed his lawn three times during a single week, and they reported this to Annabel and her mother with a great deal of indignation.

“Doesn’t the man have anything better to do with his time?” her grandfather had asked again and again, shaking his head.

“Maybe he misses cutting,” her mother said, which was a joke, but Annabel’s grandparents do not acknowledge jokes.

Her grandparents are very pale because they do not go outside and have not for many years. In their garage sits her grandfather’s car, which has not been driven in six years. Every other week, she and her mother go out and start the car to keep the battery in good condition, just in case. A couple of times, she and her mother went to the gas station and filled a large red can with gasoline, which they poured into her grandfather’s car.

“Why don’t we just take the car to the gas station?” she asked her mother. “Wouldn’t it be easier?”

“Your grandfather does not want the car moved,” her mother explained.

“Why?”

“Because something might happen to it. We might get into an accident, and then he wouldn’t have the car if he needed it.”

First, her mother rolls open the garage door, even though they will not be going anywhere. They climb in, and her mother pulls the seat forward so that she can reach the pedals. She is always careful to push it back again when they are finished, in deference to Annabel’s grandfather, who is very tall. Then, the two of them sit in the idling vehicle, staring straight ahead at the rakes that hang from the walls of the garage in neat, orderly rows.