Lori Ostlund - After the Parade

Bernice paused. Aaron wanted to ask whether she had felt the usual loneliness that comes with new surroundings, or whether it had been something more, something related to the intimacy of sharing a small space with a stranger and hearing that stranger pray for her in the dark. Later, it occurred to him that she had paused precisely at that moment so that he could ask, for when it came down to it, that was what people needed, almost more than sex or love — the reassurance that others wanted to understand them and their fears. He understood this as an adult, but only because of Walter, who had set out to learn everything about him. What a heady feeling that had been, Walter quizzing him on every detail of his life and Aaron answering, flattered and too inexperienced to know how to reciprocate. Eventually — it had taken years — Walter’s questions had stopped seeming flattering and started to seem like one more form of control, especially as Walter continued to offer little in return. Their conversations began to resemble a board game, the details of their lives like play money, both of them trying to get around the board without having his dollars end up in the other’s stack.

But that night in the Hagedorns’ living room, he had still been a boy who believed that what people said they wanted from you and what they wanted were the same thing, so he had lain on the sofa listening to Mrs. Hagedorn snore in her bedroom, her television on, while he waited for Bernice to continue. And at last, she had.

“Gladys Moore and I developed a routine. I got up early and left for my first class, and when I came back at ten, she would be running out the door and I would have two hours alone in the room. I’d unhook my bra and flop on the bed to read. Once, I clipped my toenails. Usually, I made toast, two slices with margarine because I did not like the dining hall in the morning. A few weeks passed, during which Gladys Moore and I did not become close, not the way that other roommates appeared to. I preferred this. She spent her time either doing homework or holding Bible study with several other girls. They met in the lounge so that everyone could see them poring over their Bibles because they liked the attention, though Gladys was different. I once asked her what they did at these meetings, my motive purely conversational, and she said, ‘Oh, Bernice, you should join us. We’re discussing scripture.’ She didn’t seem to get that people sometimes asked questions simply to grease the wheels of social discourse.

“Occasionally, after we turned off the lights at night, we talked for a few minutes in the dark about our families and the towns we had come from and what we hoped to do with our lives. Gladys Moore came from a town just across the North Dakota border, the kind of place that most of us were from, a small farming community. Her parents raised pigs, and she said that what she liked most about going to college was leaving the smell of the pig farm behind. She had very specific goals. She wanted to marry a pastor and live in a town like the one she had come from, where she planned to teach third grade. I’d never cared for children, nor had I considered that I might one day marry, but that was fine because I did not want us to have too much in common. It made living together in such close quarters easier, I thought. Still, there was something comforting about lying in bed, one of us talking while the other listened until she fell asleep.

“One morning when Gladys Moore came back from class, I was listening to the radio, and she demanded that I shut it off. I did. She said that she had been listening to the radio once, rock music, which was forbidden in their house, and the DJ began speaking directly to her, in words that only she could understand. ‘I knew it was Satan,’ she told me in a whisper. ‘It was just what my parents had warned me about, all of these tricks he would use to get to me.’

“I asked her what everyone else listening to the DJ at that moment had thought they were hearing, but Gladys said of course they had not heard what she did. They heard him still speaking in his normal voice because that was how Satan worked. I said that maybe it was her imagination punishing her for disobeying her parents. ‘Our psyches work that way,’ I added. I was taking an introductory psychology course.

“At hearing me interpret what had happened not as a battle for her soul but as a matter of simple human psychology, Gladys Moore looked terrified. I saw it in her eyes before she turned away, gathered her books, and left the room. The next day as I passed through the lounge during their Bible study session, Gladys whispered something to the others, and they all turned to look at me and then joined hands and began to pray. After that, the others made a point of pressing up against the wall when we passed in the hallway or moving to another sink if I stepped up beside them to brush my teeth. Only Gladys did not. She remained polite and apologetic, but something had changed. I came back from class one morning a few days later, assuming she’d already gone, but as I stood there fiddling with my bra, I realized that she was still in bed with the covers pulled over her like a tent. It was the same the next morning and the next. She stopped going to classes and then to the dining hall, and just like that, this became our new routine. She survived on the care packages that her parents sent each week, filled with her favorite foods: a fresh loaf of bread and currant jam, nacho chips and salsa, beef jerky, all of which she now consumed inside her tent.

“Her parents began calling more often, but she instructed me to tell them that she was at class, and I did, even though she was right there listening to us talk, listening to me answer questions about whether she seemed to be getting enough sleep and was enjoying her classes, whether she read her Bible and went to church on Sundays, whether anything seemed funny . I always gave the answers that I supposed they wanted to hear, which were also the answers that I supposed Gladys wanted given, and sometimes, Gladys would chuckle, as if maybe something did seem funny to her.

“ ‘Your parents want you to call,’ I would say when I hung up.

“ ‘Roger,’ she would say from under her covers.

“One morning as I made myself toast, Gladys peeked out. ‘You’re using my side,’ she said. I asked what she meant and she said in a panicky voice, ‘My side. Your side. We have sides.’ I apologized and said I hadn’t realized we had sides, and she said, ‘Don’t you remember the letter I sent?’ I said I remembered the letter, of course, but that I had thought she was just being polite, establishing what kind of a roommate she would be. ‘So when you make two slices of toast, you do it one slice at a time?’ I asked, not arguing but clarifying. By then she was completely out of her bed.

“Yes, she said, yes, of course she did, and I said, ‘Even when I’m not here?’

“ ‘Yes,’ said Gladys Moore. ‘It’s still your side.’

“ ‘Is it because you think God’s watching?’ I said.

“ ‘God is watching,’ she said, so I said, ‘I don’t mind if you use my side.’

“ ‘We have our sides,’ she said. ‘And he’s watching you also.’ She picked up the bread knife and held the blade against my forearm. ‘Remember that.’

“She got back into her tent, and I went to the library, where I couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d pressed the blade into my skin. I stayed there until it closed, so it was late when I got back to the room, almost eleven. Gladys Moore had turned on my desk lamp, which I thought she maybe intended as an apology. I undressed quietly and got into bed, but once the light was off, she whispered, ‘Be careful.’

“ ‘Careful of what?’ I whispered back.