by Lori Ostlund
Everything about the house felt wrong, not just the placement of walls and doors and rooms but even the small things: the resistance of the bathroom faucet handles, the way his chair caught on the linoleum when he slid back from the table, the quiet of the refrigerator at night. He went through Mr. Rehnquist’s house, turning on lights, but when he reached for the switch in the kitchen, it was not where he thought it should be. He was years from developing an affinity for metaphor, years from the moment that his eighteen-year-old self would stand in Walter’s house on his first night there, his hand fluttering like a moth against the wall as it searched for the switch, and think, This fumbling in the dark is how life will always be.
He could not find his mother anywhere. He walked through the house again, calling for her, but there was no answer. His mother was gone.
Finally, he opened the door of her closet and there she was, sitting on a chair beneath a bare lightbulb. “Aaron!” she said, sounding happy to see him. “Can you believe the size of this closet? I don’t know what to do with all this space.”
“It’s really big,” he agreed. He did not tell her how scared he’d been, did not ask whether she had heard him calling. He knew she had.
“Come sit with me,” she said, and he went in, closed the door, and crouched on the floor. He thought it must be late, but he did not remind her that he was starting school the next day because he liked sitting with her in the closet, which smelled of trees and something chemical-like.
“Aaron, do you remember the time your father let me drive his squad car?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t remember.”
“Of course you don’t, Silly Billy. You were just a baby. We set your carrier on the backseat, went out in the country, past Dilworth, and switched places. I drove and ran the sirens. You slept through it all. It was a magnificent feeling, Aaron.”
She smiled and touched her hand to her hair. Her nails were pink. “You’re wearing nail polish,” he said. His mother had always scoffed at nail polish.
“My roommate in the hospital gave it to me. I was trying to stop biting my nails, and she told me the polish would taste so awful I’d just quit.” Her nails looked as chewed up as ever. “It didn’t help at all,” she said sadly. “The problem is the polish doesn’t taste that bad, not like my roommate said it would, but tonight I thought I’d give it another shot.”
His mother had said nothing about a roommate. He pictured them lying side by side in their hospital beds, watching television, because his mother had explained to him after he came back from his aunt’s house that in the hospital everyone watched a lot of television. Until then, he had imagined her days filled with shots and thermometers, doctors and nurses giving her medicine and taking her temperature.
“What else did you do in the hospital?” he had asked.
“Well, I slept a lot. And we went to the cafeteria to eat. I always tried to sit by myself, but the nurses put other people with me, people who were very sick, and sometimes I had to help these people because they didn’t know how to do things.”
“What things didn’t they know how to do?” he had asked.
“Oh, you know,” she said. “Cut their food or open their milk or spread butter on their bread. There was one man who always sat holding an unopened ice cream bar against his forehead until it melted and ran down his face, so finally one night I took it from him and ripped it open, but when I handed it back to him, it fell on the floor.”
“Then what happened?”
His mother shrugged. “He cried, and after that I ate my meals in my room.”
Aaron tried to imagine people who couldn’t open a milk carton or spread butter on their food, a man who cried about ice cream. “Is that why they were in the hospital?” he asked. “Because they didn’t know how to do those things?”
His mother thought about this. “I guess so,” she’d said, and that had been the end of the discussion. Not once had she mentioned a roommate.
He looked up at her sitting on her chair, the Packers’ chair, with her pink fingernails. “What was your roommate’s name?” he asked.
“Her name was Helen,” she said. “Helen Ludtke. She was from Barnesville.”
“Where’s Barnesville?” he asked.
“I guess I don’t know exactly where it is,” she said. “Near here. Well, near Moorhead. Her husband used to drive in after chores, so it couldn’t have been far.”
“Was she very sick?” Aaron asked.
“Yes,” said his mother. “I think she was. They finally took her to a different hospital where she could stay longer. She didn’t want to go, but her husband begged her. The doctors told him he could either take her home or send her to the other hospital but there was nothing more they could do. They had eight children. Can you imagine?”
“It must be very noisy,” he said, thinking about how his cousins sounded when they were getting ready for school. His mother had not said anything about his time there, except when she found the Bible his aunt had slipped in with his dress shoes. “They never miss a chance,” she’d said, but added, “I don’t know how the hospital tracked them down, but it was good of them to take you in.”
“Yes,” his mother agreed. “It must be very noisy. Both his mother and Helen’s mother were staying at the farm to help out with the kids. I think it was actually relaxing for him to come to the hospital. He’d pack his supper, or probably one of the mothers packed it, and he would sit on Helen’s bed and talk to her while he ate.”
“What did they talk about?” Aaron asked.
“Once he told her the well was running silt and he needed to get the witcher out. Another time he said, ‘I had to put the little dog down. It took a bite out of Henry.’ He brought her things from the kids, drawings and cards, some dream bars the girls made. Almost every night, he said, ‘Your mother, my mother, the kids. I’m going nuts.’ The night he talked to the doctor, he turned around as he was leaving. ‘You need to get over this ’cause I can’t take much more,’ he said. He was crying. The next morning, Helen was gone. She left the nail polish on my nightstand.” His mother studied her pink-tipped fingers. “I liked Helen Ludtke. She was a fine roommate.”
“What was wrong with her?” Aaron asked.
His mother did not answer right away. Around them everything was quiet—the closet, their new house, the world outside. He thought about what his mother had said when she told him they were moving to Mortonville: “It’s not a place for starting over.”
“Well,” his mother said finally, “she had another baby, and then she got scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“She was scared the baby would get hurt.”
“Hurt how?”
“Well, she was afraid to clean the house because she thought she might vacuum the baby up. That was the first thing. Then she started worrying she might bake the baby in the oven while she was making supper, so she was afraid to cook.”
None of this made sense to Aaron. A baby was too big to get sucked up by a vacuum cleaner and could not climb into the oven by itself. He did not understand why Helen Ludtke did not know these things, or why they put her in the hospital instead of telling her. “Helen Ludtke had to go to the hospital because she was afraid?” he asked.
“Something like that,” his mother said. “Listen, you’ve got school tomorrow, so back to bed with you.” When he stood, she reached out and wrapped her hand around his arm just below the elbow, caressing the roughened skin with her thumb.
“Are you going to bed also?” he asked.
“I am,” she said. “But first I’m going to sit in the closet a little longer.”
9
* * *
His mother wanted him to wear his suit for his first day of school. He had left it in Moorhead, wrapped in a bag and still smelling from when he wet himself at his father’s grave. “Nobody wears a suit to school,” he said because he had not told her about urinating in the suit or leaving it behind.
“Of course
they do,” she said cheerfully, but she left him to dress himself while she went into the kitchen to make breakfast. “Don’t you look sharp,” she said when he appeared wearing his brown pants, a button-down shirt, and the dress shoes. She tied a dishtowel around his neck. She’d made cinnamon toast with the crusts removed.
“When will the bus be here?” he asked.
“I thought we’d walk today. What do you think?”
“Isn’t it far?” He did not want to disappoint her, but school had started six weeks earlier and he could not afford to be any later.
“It’s two and a half miles,” his mother said. “I checked the odometer when we followed Mr. Rehnquist out yesterday. We’ve got plenty of time.”
He went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth twice, cleaned the crumbs from his trousers, and presented himself to his mother, who stood waiting on the front steps. He could tell that it was early by the way it smelled outside. She set off briskly, and he ran after her, his satchel banging against his leg. They walked single file along the road, his mother in front while he stared at the ground, taking inventory: four dead snakes, a rotting skunk, and a turtle, still alive but with a large crack across its shell. They did not speak.
On the outskirts of town, several split-level houses were being built, and across from them were trailers lined up in neat rows. “What does that sign say?” he asked, and she read it to him: “Mortonville, population four hundred twenty-eight.”
Thirteen years later when he left, this sign would be the same, though the sign south of town, which he and Walter would pass on their way out, would say 441. “I wonder if they counted me and my mother,” he would say, because the second sign had been erected after their arrival. “I suspect it’s not a terribly accurate reckoning,” Walter would reply. “Nor do I imagine anyone will be out changing the signs tonight once they realize you’ve gone.”
A woman in front of the school began waving at them when they were still half a block away. “That must be Miss Meeks,” said his mother, lifting her hand with its chewed-up pink fingernails to wave back. He waved also, but the woman kept waving, and he turned to look behind them. There was nobody there.
“The new boy!” Miss Meeks said when they stood in front of her, declaring dramatically, “The new boy has arrived.”
“You must be Miss Meeks,” his mother said, placing her hand on his shoulder, which meant that something was expected of him.
“Good morning, Miss Meeks,” he said. He swung his satchel hard against his leg, but his hands were slick with sweat and it slipped and landed near Miss Meeks’s feet.
“Oh, goodness,” said Miss Meeks. “The new boy is nervous.”
“I’m Aaron,” he said.
As they entered the school, Miss Meeks turned to him with a severe look on her face. “We do not run in hallways,” she said, and Aaron, who was walking sedately behind her, nodded. They paused outside the classroom, and Miss Meeks turned to his mother. “I recommend that parents say good-bye at the door—to discourage outbursts.”
He had pictured his mother entering with him, the two of them enduring his classmates’ stares together. “Fine,” said his mother, and she left.
He walked in with Miss Meeks, who took him over to where several children stood in front of easels. “This is Ralph Lehn,” said Miss Meeks, gesturing at a boy who had painted a large truck and stick figures holding giant soup cans over their heads. “His father drives the garbage truck in town.” Her lips pursed in what Aaron would come to think of as her vowel lips, a poutiness that occurred when she exaggerated her vowels or disapproved of something. “Mr. Lehn, say hello to the new boy.”
“Hello, new boy,” said Ralph Lehn. He dipped the tip of his brush into the black paint and jabbed it at the paper, creating a series of black specks above the truck. “Flies,” he explained, looking at Aaron for the first time.
“Ralph, why don’t you show the new boy where to hang his jacket, and then I’ll help him with his cubbyhole.” She left, and he and Ralph Lehn stood looking at each other.
“My name is Aaron,” said Aaron. “I’m new.”
“So?” said Ralph Lehn. “What’s the big deal about being new?”
“Nothing,” said Aaron.
“You put your stupid jacket over there. What else do you want to know?”
“What does your father do with the garbage after he picks it up? Does he bring it to your house?”
“Why would we want everyone’s stinking garbage at our house?” said Ralph Lehn. “He takes it to the landfill and dumps it in a big hole, and then a cat covers it up with dirt.”
Aaron loved cats. His neighbors in Moorhead had had two cats that used to climb over the fence and defecate in his sandbox. He rarely played in the sandbox, so he did not mind, particularly as he had admired how neat and focused they were, crouching with their tails erect and twitching, then turning to sniff at what they had created before covering it with sand. He tried to imagine a cat so large that it could bury a truckload of garbage.
“Are you allowed to pet the cat?” he asked Ralph Lehn. His father had forbidden him to pet the neighbors’ cats, but he had done it anyway when his father was at work.
“It’s not a real cat. It’s a Caterpillar. Don’t you know nothing about machinery?”
Aaron thought that caterpillars made even less sense than cats, but he did not ask Ralph Lehn any more questions. He was not interested in machinery. He hung his jacket on an empty hook and took his satchel over to Miss Meeks, who showed him his cubbyhole. When he had finished arranging his school supplies inside it, she pointed to a table and said, “You’re at table five.” He sat down and waited, and finally Miss Meeks clapped, and everyone else sat also.
“We’ll begin Show and Tell today with the new boy,” Miss Meeks said, pointing at Aaron. “This is Aaron Englund. He just moved to Mortonville with his mother.” She sat down at her desk, hands clasped atop it. “Aaron,” she said, “you may take over.”
“You better go up,” whispered a boy at his table.
“Mr. Englund, please come to the front. Your classmates have questions for you.”
Aaron rose and went to the front. “Questions for the new boy?” Miss Meeks said, scanning the room.
“Moo,” said a thin boy with great feeling, and Miss Meeks ordered him into the corner.
A bored-looking girl in a cowgirl outfit asked, “What did you do this summer?” Her nose was turned up so that her nostrils appeared gaping.
“I went to the Paul Bunyans, the sitting-down one and the standing-up one. We stayed at a motel. Mainly, my father drove a lot, and I was in the backseat.”
“Did your father come here with you?” asked a girl with black glasses and a small, curious face. She was from his table.
“My father died,” he said. Everyone was listening now. “Then my mother had to go to the hospital. I stayed with my uncle and aunt and cousins. They also have a Foster.”
“How did your father die?” asked the girl with glasses, kindly.
“He was in a parade with some other policemen, and they were on a float. My father fell off and hit his head.”
His new classmates stared. Even the boy in the corner turned around and stared, and the girl with glasses took them off as though they had become too heavy for her face. Miss Meeks stood and rapped on her desk. “Aaron Englund, you may return to your table. That’s enough Show and Tell for one day.”
When he sat down, the girl with glasses leaned toward him. “My puppy died,” she said. “The hired hand ran him over with the combine. We buried him by the barn.”
“Were you sad?” he whispered.
“Class,” said Miss Meeks, “we would expect the new boy to be more interested in making a good impression than in carrying on side conversations during precious class time. But perhaps rudeness is common where he comes from.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Meeks,” he said, but she did not respond to his apology except to hold up a large cutout of the letter V made fr
om green construction paper, the two legs framing her face as though a giant frog were doing the splits in front of her.
“This is our letter for today. Can anyone tell me what letter it is?”
Several children raised their hands. Miss Meeks called on the pug-nosed girl. “V,” said the girl. “V as in Valentine.”
“That is correct, Kimberly. Valentine starts with V.” Miss Meeks faced the class, panting “vuh, vuh, vuh” at them, and they repeated it: “Vuh, vuh, vuh.”
“V-v-valentine,” said Miss Meeks. “Who can think of another word that starts with V?”
“Vegetable,” said the girl with the dead puppy, almost apologetically, which made Aaron like her even more.
“V-v-vegetable,” said Miss Meeks. “Good.”
“Vickie,” shouted the boy who had sat happily in the corner during Show and Tell. Everyone turned to look at a girl at Aaron’s table who had bread crumbs dusting her mouth and what appeared to be dried egg yolk on her chin.
“Vickie,” said Miss Meeks, “can you come up and write your name on the board for us?” The girl shook her head, scattering crumbs. Miss Meeks said, “Fine,” as though it were not really fine. “Other words, class?” she asked.
A very tall girl said, “Veterinarian,” which Aaron had never heard of, but when Miss Meeks said, “Does everyone know what a veterinarian is?,” the class nodded, so he did not ask.
He raised his hand shyly, and Miss Meeks said, “Remember, it must start with V.”
“Vacancy,” he announced.
“Vacancy,” said Miss Meeks. “Perhaps the new boy would like to explain his word to the class.” He did not understand why she was mad, only that she was. She noted his confusion and looked pleased, and he realized that Miss Meeks did not think he knew what vacancy meant. His eyes burned. It means when there’s room for you, he wanted to say.
