Lori Ostlund - After the Parade

He nodded. “You were cracking walnuts with your hands, and she was talking about my father,” he said. “But I was sure that neither of you saw me.”

“Your mother, no, but I knew the sorts of tricks my brother was fond of. I knew he’d send you out to spy. He was very upset about the visit. He didn’t speak to me for two days before you and Dolores arrived.”

“Because he didn’t like visitors?”

“There was that.” She fiddled with the belt of her robe. “But he was especially upset that it was your mother coming.”

“He was jealous,” Aaron said, aiming for matter-of-factness, and Gloria coughed and cinched her belt tighter.

“I guess something like that,” she said. “Anyway, what you heard that day, about what your father said? I was very sorry you heard that. Clary was sorry also.”

“It’s such a strange thing, memory,” Aaron said. “I mean, I’m sitting here with you thirty-five years later, and I remember everything about that visit, everything Clarence said to me, even though I didn’t understand half of it. How does that happen? Why does our memory cling to certain things and just discard others?”

“I don’t know,” Gloria said. “I can tell you exactly what your mother was wearing the first time I saw her, but I have no idea what the weather was like the day I got married.”

“You were married?” Aaron said.

“It only lasted a day. He was a nice enough man. His name was Donald, and he sold tires. That’s how we met. He worked at a place outside Fargo. I was bringing a couple of my father’s spring lambs into the lab at the university there. They’d died suddenly, and my father wanted some tests done, just to make sure there was nothing to worry about. I picked up a nail outside of town, and the back tire went. I had to unload both lambs onto the road to get to the spare. I must have been quite a sight, changing a tire with a couple of dead lambs looking on.”

They both laughed, and Aaron recalled with a twinge that he had been put off by Gloria as a boy, had not liked the way she doted on Clarence, cutting his meat and patting his head. She was a good person, kind, and he felt ashamed that he had not recognized this then.

“And so you loaded up the sheep and limped over to his tire shop on your spare, and while he fixed your flat, you fell in love?” he said.

“Well, he did fix my tire, but the marriage was really just a matter of convenience, maybe not for him so much — men get away with a lot more — but I was twenty-six, and people were starting to talk. He was impressed that I’d changed the flat by myself, and there was something nice about that, about looking at another person and seeing myself reflected as smart and capable. So when Donald started driving out here on Sundays, I didn’t object. It was the first time anyone had pursued me, and there was something nice about that also.” She sounded embarrassed.

“I was tired of my life here, tired of the farm, of taking care of everything and having all the attention go to Clary. The truth is, I was tired of Clary and of my parents’ guilt and sadness. And Donald really was a very decent man.” She tapped one of her giant fingers on the table to emphasize this, to let him know that there had been nothing wrong with Donald. “I thought maybe it could work somehow, so a couple of months later we eloped. We drove down to Minneapolis, got married, and went to a ball game. That was our honeymoon. We were staying with his cousin out in Stillwater, but that night when we got back from the game… well, afterward, I realized it wasn’t for me.”

It took Aaron a moment to understand what Gloria meant: she had had sex with Donald and knew she could not do it for a lifetime, could not do it even one more time.

“The next morning I woke Donald up and told him I just wasn’t cut out for it. I didn’t go into the specifics because I’d heard men feel bad about such things. He wasn’t happy about it, but he didn’t try to stop me. I walked to a bus stop, got on the next bus, and rode until I liked the look of things. I got off, found the job with the electric company the next day, and that’s where I met Dolores. She started a week after me.”

“Did you ever hear from Donald?” Aaron asked.

“No. As far as I know, we’re still married, but he’s surely passed by now. He was an older gentleman, almost fifty when we got married.”

“I could look him up on the Internet,” Aaron said. “Put in his name and see what comes up.”

“Thank you,” Gloria said, “but I’d rather not know.”

Aaron nodded. He thought he should say good night, get some sleep so that he could wake up in the morning, which was only a few hours off, and leave. Gloria took her cup over to the sink, where she spent several minutes washing it, several more rinsing it. Next, she opened a cupboard and took down two plates and retrieved a bag from the bread box. He did not know that people still had bread boxes. Inside the bag were homemade caramel rolls with walnuts. She put a roll on each plate and set one in front of him, the other in front of herself.

“When your mother arrived that night,” she said, “I didn’t know she was coming. You might not believe that, but she just pulled into the yard and knocked on the door. I went out and got her suitcases from the trunk, sent him on his way. I didn’t know he was a pastor, not then. I figured it all out later, that he believed they were running away together, to be together. I guess Dee let him think that, let him burn his bridges. When I leaned in the window to tell him I had everything and to thank him for bringing her, he started crying, just sat there smoking a cigarette and crying. I guess he was accepting the truth, that she’d just needed—” She stopped abruptly.

“A way out,” Aaron said, and Gloria nodded.

“I didn’t ask any questions, Aaron. I should have. I should have asked, first thing, where you were, but I didn’t. I’ve never pushed Dee on things, and I guess that’s why she’s stayed. Sometimes, she feels like talking, and she does, talks and talks, but that’s rare. If I ask her a question point-blank, she gives me the silent treatment for days. So I don’t ask. I’ve made it easy for her, too easy, and I’m sorry about that.”

He thought about what Charles Gronseth had said on the telephone just the week before, that his mother ran away because she had lost the ability to make her life interesting. “She came here to die, didn’t she?” he said.

Gloria’s hands were stacked like baseball mitts on the table in front of her. “Maybe something like that was on her mind, but I don’t know whether she was thinking about, you know.”

“Killing herself?” Then, because he felt he had to know, he asked, “Did she try?”

“There are other ways to stop living,” Gloria said carefully.

“Meaning?”

“She never tried anything specific, Aaron. Still, I can’t help but think she came here because she was ready to… to give up, I guess. She was tired of doing all the things that people do to keep living — working, paying bills, making decisions.”

“Taking care of her son,” he added.

She nodded. “Yes, but also she didn’t want you to go through that.”

“Through what?” he said. “Through wondering where she was, whether she was still alive? Or through wondering, every day for years, whether I was the reason she’d left? What, exactly, didn’t she want me to go through?”

“I’m sorry,” Gloria said. “Clary kept telling me I needed to be harder on her, but I wouldn’t listen. I just thought he didn’t want me to be happy. Anyway, the truth is that having Dee here hasn’t made me happy, or her less unhappy.”

“Has it at least made you less lonely?” he asked. “Because being around people you love, even those who don’t love you back the same way, sometimes that can at least make you less lonely.” He paused. “Though usually it makes you more lonely.”