Lori Ostlund - After the Parade

Unlike his mother, Aaron had never doubted the story’s veracity. He just did not understand why his father found it funny, for no matter how many times his father told it, it was always the same: a man called Stinky chasing a dying deer, wanting that deer so bad that he shit in his own hand to get it. Standing outside the bathroom with a roll of toilet paper, Aaron wondered what his aunt would make of the story, whether she would laugh also or cry in envy. She called to him, and he went in. There she sat with her elbows on her knees, her pink robe tented over her, covering everything but her calves. She looked up at him, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have another person seeing you like that: hunched and vulnerable and straining.

“Thank you,” she said, adding, “You’re a good boy.”

He went into the kitchen and began extracting cleaners from beneath the sink, lining them up on the counter — Pledge, Lysol, Comet. His favorite was the Lysol. He unscrewed the top and breathed in its powerful, antiseptic odor. Soon, the smell would fill the room and then the house. Several years later, as he was cleaning the bathrooms in the café before school one morning, he would breathe in the Lysol’s omnipresent odor and finally understand: his aunt, who had believed God was everywhere, was used to being watched, not just when she was cooking and cleaning and praying, but even when she was on the toilet. And though Aaron did not believe in God, he hoped she had found comfort in having a steady witness to the suffering that would otherwise have been hers to bear alone.

* * *

One morning, Aaron and his aunt drove past the spot where his father had tumbled from the float and died. His aunt said nothing. They were on their way to Target. He had never been to Target. They started in the Men’s Department, where his aunt picked out undershirts for his uncle, then went on to Children’s. “What do you think about this for Mark?” she asked, holding up a blue plaid shirt that looked just like the shirts Mark always wore.

“I think he’ll like it,” Aaron said.

“Do you think so? Boys can be so difficult to buy for.” She said this as though Aaron were not a boy.

She chose shirts for everyone but the Foster. “What about the Foster?” he said. “What color would she like?”

“Don’t call her the Foster. You’ll hurt her feelings. Her name is Alice.”

Alice . It was a nice-enough name. He did not recall hearing anyone in the family use it. “What color should we get for Alice?” he asked.

“We can’t get anything for Alice today,” his aunt explained. “She has a stipend. There’s not enough money left this month.”

Aaron did not know what a stipend was. “Won’t she feel bad?” he asked.

“Well, I suppose she might, but she knows the rules.”

“Oh,” said Aaron. He had not known there were rules.

Nearly twenty years later, as he signed a credit card receipt in a bookstore at the shopping mall in Fargo, the woman behind the counter would look at the name on his card and begin to laugh, pointing at the book that he was purchasing, photographs of nude men. “Now what would your aunt and uncle have to say about your reading material?” she would ask. Only then would he look at the woman, who was pretty in the way of women who work just a bit too hard at it, and realize it was the Foster.

“Oh, my gosh. Foster,” he would say, knowing that was not her name, and she would scowl prettily at him, the sort of woman who could not help flirting with a man, even one buying a book filled with pictures of naked men.

“You still haven’t figured out that’s not my name, Aaron?”

He would apologize, and she would say, “Alice.” He would ask about his aunt and uncle and cousins, and she would say, “What a family of freaks.”

“Zilpah?” he would ask.

Zilpah was dead, she would tell him matter-of-factly. Right up until the end, her father had refused treatment. She thought there had been a case, something legal, but she didn’t know what had come of it. She would suggest they get a drink and catch up, and when he said he needed to get going, she would call after him poutily, “Enjoy your book.”

“I have a surprise,” his aunt said. “We’re going to buy you school supplies.” She clapped her hands together. “That way, you’ll be ready when you start.”

“I don’t have any money,” Aaron said. He laid his hands on his pockets, recalling the pennies.

“I have money,” his aunt said. “It will be my treat. We’ll hide everything from your uncle.”

“Why will we hide it?” he asked.

“It’ll be fun to hide it. It’ll be our secret.”

They spent forty-five minutes choosing supplies: two fat pencils; a pink eraser; a jar of paste, which his aunt let him smell; and a pair of small, dull scissors. She took down two cardboard boxes with flip lids, one picturing whales and alligators, the other Raggedy Ann and Andy. “Which one do you like?” she asked. “To put everything in.”

He liked Raggedy Ann and Andy, who were smiling and holding hands, but he pointed to the whales and alligators.

“They sure are cute,” his aunt said, gazing at Raggedy Ann and Andy before returning that box to the shelf. She held up the one he had chosen. “It says here these animals are endangered.”

“What does endangered mean?”

“It means there aren’t so many left,” she explained.

“Where did they go?”

“People kill them,” she said, “even though God wants us to protect animals.” She put the box in the cart.

In the car on the way home, he said, “Thank you for my supplies.” They were stopped, waiting for a train to pass. He wondered whether the conductor had noticed them and thought, There sits a boy with his mother .

“It’s my pleasure,” she said. She asked whether he liked trains. When he said no, she began to cry. “You’ll be going home soon.” She rummaged in her purse for a tissue. “Your mother called.”

“She’s not sick anymore?” he asked. “When is she coming?”

“I think she’s coming soon.”

In fact, when they got home, the Oldsmobile was parked at the curb and his mother stood in the yard wearing a fluorescent orange stocking cap with a pompom. It was not cold yet, so the cap puzzled him, especially since his mother did not like bright colors. She raised her hand, not quite waving, and he began to open the car door. “Wait till I stop,” said his aunt. Then, they were stopped, and his aunt said, “I didn’t think it would be so soon,” but he was already out the door and running toward his mother.

“Aaron,” said his mother in a surprised voice, as if she were not expecting to find him there.

“Why are you wearing a hat?” he asked.

She laughed self-consciously. “Oh, I’m just feeling chilly these days. One of the nurses found it in the lost-and-found box and gave it to me.” In a teasing voice, she asked, “Does it look so awful?”

“No,” he said. “It’s nice. I like orange.”

He did not like orange, which his mother knew. He put his arms around her waist, and she squeezed him back, and they stood like that, not speaking. Finally, she bent down and brushed his face with the fat, orange pompom. “How’s that?” she asked.

He made a laughing sound. “It tickles,” he said and broke free.

“Hello, Dolores,” said his aunt.

“Hello, Jean.”

His aunt went into the house and packed a grocery bag with the clothes he had been wearing the day he arrived as well as the hand-me-downs he had been wearing since. On top was the box with his new dress shoes, inside of which she had tucked a small Bible. He wondered whether she’d hidden it because of his mother or because she thought he would enjoy the surprise of finding it. She carried the bag outside, and after his mother set it on the backseat, his aunt said, “Can’t you stay a bit? Irv’ll be home any minute.”