Lori Ostlund - After the Parade

“I’m sorry, Lerma,” he said. “I’m very sorry. Everyone.” His voice trembled. “Let’s take a break.” He went across the hallway to the room where Bill used to teach sleuthing. It was dark inside, but he did not turn on the light. He went in and sat at the table and cried. He wondered whether his mother had felt this way when she sat in the closet after his father died, as though she had no idea what she was crying about at all.

The next morning when Aaron pressed the button on his remote control, the garage door did not open. He tried the wall control, thinking his batteries were dead, but the door remained firmly closed, not even making the whirring sound that meant it was trying. He thought he could hear Mrs. Ng upstairs, so he seized a rake and banged it against the ceiling, but upstairs Mrs. Ng went blithely along with her morning routine, unaware that he was trapped below her. He began to think about earthquakes, for that was the way the mind worked, wasn’t it? And the more he thought about them, the surer he became that one would occur any minute. The house would buckle down on top of him, Mrs. Ng’s screaming the last thing he heard.

In second grade, when he first learned the unbearable truth that the earth was spinning beneath him, he’d felt a similar panic. He remembered standing outside after school, thinking about it: this earth beneath him that felt so solid was turning at a frantic pace. He had flung himself on the ground and hung on. It seemed the only thing to do, and it had helped. He went back into his studio and lay down, wrapping his arms around the mattress.

The last time he saw his mother, she was in bed also. After Gloria gave him Clarence’s book, she took him upstairs to where his mother lay, in a bed that was clearly too small to accommodate a second person, certainly not Gloria with her giant body. The covers were pulled up over her, so he could not even tell which way she was facing. He and Gloria stood in the doorway, and finally Gloria said, “Dolores, Aaron’s leaving. He’d like to say good-bye.”

His mother did not reply or take the covers off her head to look at him.

“I’m hoping to be back in the Twin Cities by noon,” he said, “so I guess this is it.” He thought he should say more, but he could not act as though this were a routine visit, one that concluded with him thanking her for her hospitality. “Remember the coma?” he said. “I used to worry about it all the time, wondering whether it could happen again. I still do.” He paused. “When I woke up that night, you were sitting by the window in my hospital room. It was dark outside, and for a while, I just watched you. You seemed to have forgotten all about me lying there behind you. Afterward, I could never call up the image of you looking out into the night without thinking that that was the moment I should have known you would leave.”

He turned as if to go, but he knew he would regret it if his last words to her sounded bitter, angry. “Anyway,” he added, “I want you to know that I’ve had a good life.” It was not that he forgave her. He did not, not yet, but he was giving her permission to forgive herself. He did not think she would. His mother was not ready to be done with guilt or unhappiness.

It was eight thirty. He was going to be late for work, but he did not get off the bed or think about the garage door that would not open. Instead, he thought about how Walter used to get into bed with him when he sensed that something was wrong, about the way Walter would take his hand and hold it tightly and they would lie together, not talking, just staring at the ceiling because Walter had understood that sometimes it was enough for two people to be looking at the same thing. And just like that he could breathe.

He called Marla and told her what had happened. He asked whether Taffy was at work already, and Marla handed the telephone to Taffy, who was sitting right there in her office and who did have the Ngs’ number, had written it down when she arranged for him to rent the studio. He listened to the phone ringing above him. He listened to Mrs. Ng walking across the room toward it. He thought that she hesitated right before picking it up, but then she did pick it up, answering in Chinese, and soon he was free.

* * *

Winnie had told him once that when she felt stuck, she tried to find the wherewithal to make just one change. She said that if she could do that, sometimes everything else followed. That afternoon he stayed after school, looking through apartment listings in the computer lab, and three days later he found a new studio. It was near the school, but what he liked most about it was that it was on the fifth floor. When he stood at the window while the landlord pretended to be busy behind him, he could see the ocean just nine blocks away. He had not known until then that just seeing the ocean would make him feel better.

The studio cost more than the Ngs’ studio, but he would be leaving the school soon. It was not a place one stayed for long, unless you were a lazy teacher like Felix or ill-equipped for the world like Taffy. Until he found something else, a job that paid better, he would be fine. Walter had sent him a check, a buyout for his part of their house in Albuquerque. It had arrived one week after he sent the letter from the airport, wrapped in a half sheet of blank typing paper. He had not cashed the check yet, but Winnie said he needed to, her reasoning based not on the fact that he needed the money (though he did) but on her observation that he needed to stop giving substance to his guilt.

He told the landlord on the spot that he would take the apartment. Then he walked up Fulton and cut down into the Castro. He went into the café where he had met George, ordered a slice of apple pie, and sat at a table to eat and read poetry and wait. He did this every afternoon for the rest of the week while in the evenings he repacked his few belongings into boxes. He told the Ngs that he would be moving out. They did not ask why, and he did not tell them because there was no reason to tell them. They knew they argued. They did not need him pointing out that they were unhappy.

One afternoon, Eugenia came into the faculty room and stared at him in that way that meant she was waiting for him to look up so that she could start talking. In the past, he had listened to her with a bland expression on his face that Eugenia always interpreted as interested, but today he pretended to focus on other tasks — his timesheet, corrections to Pilar’s résumé. Finally, Eugenia could not help herself. “You’re going to the Pride Parade this weekend, right?” she said, asking in the same way that she had asked about the missing Lake Wobegon tapes, as though assured of his interest.

“No,” he said. “I don’t like parades.” This was true. He had never taken to parades. People who knew about his father treated his dislike as a given, for how could he ever get past the memory of the float and his father tumbling backward through the air? But he believed that his aversion was a response to the overall aesthetics of parades — the gaudy floats, the music that inspired marching, the sun bright overhead — though it was possible everyone else was right.

“But everybody in San Francisco goes to Pride,” Eugenia said.

“Well, that’s one more reason to stay home,” he said. He laughed to show that he was sort of kidding, and then he said, “Anyway, I’m moving this weekend.”

In class the next day, Paolo asked whether he would be going to the parade.

“Actually, I’m moving this weekend, to a new apartment, so I don’t have time for parades.” He pretended to sound disappointed.

“Are you needing help?” said one of the Borols.

“No,” he said quickly. He did not like people handling his belongings. He never had, but he especially did not want his students doing so. He did not want to think of Chisato carrying a box that contained his underwear and socks or the Thais lifting his mattress, because how did you carry someone’s mattress without picturing the person on top of it, sleeping or having sex, intimate activities that he did not want his students imagining when they looked at him. He had boundaries, and boundaries were a good thing. But letting others help you was a good thing also. Winnie had told him that on the trip.