Lori Ostlund - After the Parade

“I’m not sure why I’m here,” Aaron said. “All these years, I’ve never tried to find you.” He could not see her face or gauge her reaction. Maybe that had been her plan all along — to wait for darkness, believing it would make them both braver. “When I thought of you, I sometimes thought of you alive and other times, dead.” Or maybe she had awakened him from the fog of sleep in order to have the upper hand. “But mainly I didn’t think about you.” Only then did he consider that she had no plan, that she had gone to bed, expecting to sleep, but the need to talk had overwhelmed her.

She did not respond, which unnerved him, though he recalled from his childhood this manner of listening that involved silence. It was not particular to his mother. He was the one who had changed, who had come to believe that a person had to say he was listening in order to be listening.

“Walter always felt I should look for you,” he went on, filling the silence. “But that was Walter.”

It was the first time he had referred to Walter. He decided that he would provide no clauses or parentheticals to establish the details of his life, to explain who Walter was, who he was. He would not make it easy for her.

“How did you and Walter meet?” asked his mother, surprising him.

“In the café.” He took pleasure in revealing that Walter was someone for whom she had once cooked. He did not explain the rest of the story, how he had met Walter again after she left, how they had come to live together and be lovers. Let her wonder.

“So you’re a homosexual,” she said at last.

He had always hated the word homosexual, which tended to be used by those uncomfortable with the compactness of gay, those requiring just a few more syllables. “Well, yes,” he said. “I believe that’s been established.”

“It was Walter,” she said.

“What was?”

“Walter was the one who told me things about you — that you were a teacher, that you were good at it, that you had moved to San Francisco.”

“You talked to him?”

“No,” said his mother. “He wrote to me.”

“When?”

“After you left.” She sighed. “But also once before that. Maybe ten years ago. You had just moved to New Mexico, and he wanted me to know that you were fine, that you were a good teacher and a good person. I still remember what he wrote: Aaron’s students love and respect him. He’s great at what he does. He is a compassionate human being .”

“Did you write back to him?” he asked.

“No. What would’ve been the point? He didn’t write because he wanted to make me feel better. He wrote because he was angry at me.”

“Why?”

“Oh, Aaron,” she said, sounding sad and wise and like a mother. “He wanted me to know that you didn’t need me, that you were just fine, that you had managed nicely without me. He didn’t say that the two of you were — you know — but I could tell because he was just so angry.” Aaron did not know what to make of this, how to reconcile what his mother was telling him with the way that Walter had always talked to him about his mother, patiently, as though Aaron were a student in need of his advice.

“Did you come here to Gloria right away?” Aaron asked, even though he knew the answer. What he wanted to know — what he was trying to bring the conversation around to — was why she had left.

“It’s not like that,” his mother said. “Why does everything have to be about that?”

“About what?” he said, not understanding her response or the irritation in her voice.

“About”—she paused and even her pause sounded mad—“about love.”

The afternoon that he opened the envelope Bill had given him and looked at his mother’s address, he had not recognized it as Gloria’s. He had gone to Bill’s funeral that morning and then to the hippie café to drink several beers in his friend’s honor, and though he was not drunk, he thought that the funeral and the beer explained what he did next: he dialed the telephone number for Charles Gronseth, which Bill had also included. Charles Gronseth picked up after just two rings, and when Aaron identified himself, there was silence and then Charles Gronseth said, “Just a minute, please,” and Aaron heard him say to someone, his wife he supposed, “It’s a client.”

Bill had told him that Pastor Gronseth was no longer a pastor. He was just Charles Gronseth, married for the third time and living in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, where he sold insurance, successfully Aaron imagined, for Charles Gronseth had always been good at talking, at making people afraid of the unknown.

On the other end, Aaron heard footsteps, a door closing. “What a nice surprise,” said Charles Gronseth. “I thought you might call.” His voice was hearty, but the two statements contradicted each other: one could not be both surprised by a call and expecting it. Charles Gronseth was nervous, which made Aaron feel oddly better.

“I hear you’re selling insurance?” Aaron said.

“Aaron, let’s cut past the small talk,” Charles Gronseth said. “You’re calling because you want to know about your mother. I told everything to that detective, but I guess it still doesn’t make sense to you, so let me explain it one more time.” He paused. “And then I’m going to ask you never to call here again.”

Aaron felt a shot of rage, but when he spoke, he said only, “Fine.”

“Being a pastor is a very lonely thing,” began Charles Gronseth. “Everyone comes to you with their problems. They tell you about themselves, about their marriages and children, their disappointments and failures and weaknesses. And your job is to listen, to offer advice and encouragement, to tell them to pray. But who does the pastor talk to? Nobody wants to hear about his problems. They don’t want to hear that he and his wife sleep in separate rooms, that they keep their cutlery in separate drawers because they can’t bear the thought of their mouths touching the same thing. And your mother was lonely also.”

“I know that,” Aaron said.

“She didn’t think of me as a pastor. We just talked like two regular people. I understood her. We understood each other. At least, that’s what I thought. I thought we were running away together, to be together. I thought we were in love.”

“Love?” Aaron said. He was not expecting the conversation to involve love.

“Yes,” Charles Gronseth said. “I guess that sounds silly to you. It certainly sounds silly to me now. I’ve had a lot of years to think about it.”

“Whose idea was it to, you know, run away?”

“It was your mother’s, but only because it occurred to her first. Believe me — I was more than willing. Then, it turned out that she was just using me.”

“Using you how?” asked Aaron.

“To get up her nerve, I guess. You know how it is. You realize that you need to do something, but you don’t always have it in you to do it on your own.”

“So you used each other,” Aaron said, not defending his mother but stating what seemed obvious.

Charles Gronseth laughed, a bitter laugh. “I suppose we did,” he said. “My wife and I were barely speaking. I woke up one day and realized that my son had become just like her — petty and complaining. When you live every day feeling disappointed, it gets harder and harder to go about your daily duties, to pretend that you know about God and forgiveness and love of any sort, human or divine.”

“And my mother?” said Aaron.

“Your mother understood these things.” He paused. “She was a very unhappy person.”

“I know that,” Aaron said. He did know it. He did not need Charles Gronseth to tell him. “I guess what I really want to know is about that night. Because the last time I saw my mother, she was sitting in the booth with you the way she did every night, looking like she was going to stand up any minute and go to bed and then wake up and do it all over again the next day.” His voice broke, and he stopped.