Lori Ostlund - The Bigness of the World

One morning, I carried our dirty rugs down to the street, where four men in blue jumpsuits stood on the sidewalk around a large hole that had been dug to expose our building’s gas line, staring into it as they sipped cognac that had been delivered from the bar on the corner. It was ten thirty in the morning, a suitable hour for a drink apparently, for I had been watching this same cycle of events for nearly two weeks — two weeks, I should add, during which we had no gas for cooking or hot showers. The mailman arrived then and was invited to join them, which he did, eagerly claiming a cognac and edging up to the hole.

It disappointed me to see him so easily distracted from the rigor of his day, for one of the things I most liked about Spain was that mail was delivered not once, but twice, daily. Just the evening before, I had come home to find proof of this second round of deliveries, a letter from my father consisting of one sentence written on the back of a used café receipt. “Thought you’d be interested,” it said, a reference to the attached clipping from the local paper describing the details of Mrs. Carlstrom’s recent death.

It was in a similar fashion, two years earlier, that I had learned of the massive stroke that left her paralyzed and unable to speak, though there was speculation that her condition had worsened during the forty hours she lay on her kitchen floor, waiting for her husband, a truck driver, to return home and find her. “He’s parked her in Lakeview,” my father wrote at the end of that epistle, referring to the nursing home in Glenville, a place I knew well, for when I was ten, I made monthly visits there to a man whom the Girl Scouts had chosen to be my foster grandfather, though he was only thirty-two, younger even than my parents, and lived there because he was mentally retarded and had nowhere else to go. I brought him cookies, usually cinnamon logs. These he ate in a single sitting, always offering me one, which I refused because the smell of the place — urine and ointment and what I assumed to be aging flesh — made me gag. In fact, sitting perched on a chair beside him, I felt like an older sister charged with watching him eat, which he did loudly and messily. Though I did not do so, I had an overwhelming desire to scold him, to point to the wet crumbs scattered across his face and shirt, knowing that he would make an effort at reform, for, even though I was a child (or perhaps because I was a child), I could see that docility was expected from the residents, which is why I could not imagine Mrs. Carlstrom there — until it occurred to me that the stroke had imposed a docility all its own.

Thus, two years had passed, during which time I thought of her infrequently, if at all. According to the article, she had been visited daily by her husband, whom the staff described as “a quiet, overly devoted man.” Indeed, he had given up trucking in order to sit beside her in silence, she unable to speak and he, presumably, not wont to, a routine that had continued day after day until he arrived one afternoon for his daily visit, placed a pistol directly above her left ear, and shot her as she sat propped up in her bed. The staff had gathered in the hallway, too afraid to enter the room where Mr. Carlstrom sat holding his wife’s hand, the pistol resting atop the mound of her stomach. When the sheriff, a man with whom Mr. Carlstrom sometimes hunted, arrived, Mr. Carlstrom let go of her hand so that he could be handcuffed.

“I did it because I loved her,” he was quoted as saying, a statement about which much had been made, by the community and, therefore, by the press, who devoted the remainder of the article to comments reflecting what was termed community grief : “He’s nothing but a cold-blooded murderer,” Alice, thirty-eight, of Glenville, had said, while a local pastor warned, “To say that this was done out of love is blasphemy.” I showed the article to Georgia, my voice tight as I read aloud these statements from people who had been his neighbors and friends, people whom I knew I might recognize by sight or surname.

“They’re in shock,” she offered.

“You don’t know that,” I replied angrily. “You’re from New York. You don’t know the first thing about these people.” Which implied that I did. We went off to our separate rooms, and in the morning when I awoke, Georgia had already gone out.

I knew that some sort of gesture was needed, an action that would be viewed as conciliatory, and so I had decided to clean the apartment, which is how I came to be standing on the sidewalk with the rugs, watching the men in blue jumpsuits drink cognac and nod at the gas line. Determined that their idleness not dictate my own, I dumped my bundle of rugs to the ground, chose one, and began shaking it mightily so that it snapped like a sail in the wind and filled the air with dust.

“¡Olé!” cried out one of the men while the others laughed and cheered me on.

“Don’t you have work?” I asked in awkward Spanish, glaring at the hole.

“Ah,” said the mailman. “You must be the American.” He set down his cognac, dipped into his mailbag, and produced two letters, which I stepped toward him to receive. As I did so, however, extending my hand eagerly, I felt something hit my wrist, a warm, gentle splat, and I held it up for inspection. There it was, no bigger than a squirt of toothpaste, a small white glob drizzled with specks of black, so stunningly simple in appearance that it struck me as something that might be presented, atop an oversized dinner plate and with much fanfare, at a restaurant featuring haute cuisine.

“Asshole birds,” said the mailman, shaking his head sadly, and the others joined in, loudly and creatively cursing the birds perched on the balcony above us.

I, though, was in no mood for sympathy, certainly not that tendered by a group of men who had been mocking me moments earlier and who, moreover, were the reason I had not enjoyed a hot shower in weeks. My anger, of course, was much broader, including in its scope any number of things: the fact that across the ocean, in the place where I had grown up, an old man sat in jail awaiting trial for what I deemed the ultimate act of love (because, at that age and fresh from years spent in the study of literature, I believed that sacrifice always implied love); that for this act he had already been judged harshly by those around him; and that I myself, despite my years of bookish devotion to such matters, had absolutely no idea how to engage in the pursuit of love.

“Chica,” said one of the men, awkwardly (and loudly). “Don’t cry.” And I realized only then that I was.

He bent down and picked up a cognac, which he handed to me. “To the asshole birds that shit on us,” he said cheerfully, waving his glass in the air as the others joined in. I clinked my glass against theirs and we drank, drank with the relish that comes from toasting adversity.

Dear Mr. Carlstrom [I wrote later that morning],

Twenty years ago, your wife was my teacher. From her, I learned, among other things, the correct use of the apostrophe. I am currently living in Spain, a country technically without apostrophes, though this does not prevent people from using them everywhere. Yesterday, for example, I saw a sign that read “Billiard’s” and another offering “English language book’s.” I could not help but think of Mrs. Carlstrom, who would have inquired indignantly, “Of what, may I ask, are these billiards and books in possession?” I am teaching English to businessmen here, and though I am not suited for this particular audience, I believe that I may be suited for the profession itself.

There was something generally deceitful about the letter, which implied that Mrs. Carlstrom had somehow influenced my decision to become a teacher. She had not, nor had she taught me the correct usage of the apostrophe, although she had tried on several occasions, always unsuccessfully. Still, I felt that the letter contained the spirit of what I wanted to say, which was that she had, in some way, marked my childhood, and so I mailed it, addressing it simply, “Mr. Carlstrom, Glenville, MN, USA.” As I walked home from the post office, I stopped to purchase a propane camping stove, and that evening I prepared a soup consisting of what we had on hand: ten shriveled carrots, a few potatoes, and frozen shrimp that turned mealy long before Georgia arrived home.