After the Parade

7

His first month in San Francisco, Aaron’s thoughts were consumed by earthquakes. He began to wonder whether his subconscious knew something, even though this kind of thinking — thinking that involved talk of the subconscious — made him uncomfortable. He did not discount intuition or careful observation but found that people too often relied on superstition and wishful thinking, which he grew impatient of being expected to accord the same weight as logic. He spoke aloud of his fear only once, to Taffy, who told him that the school had recently employed a woman from Oklahoma. She had moved home after just one month because she could not stop thinking about earthquakes. Moving back to Albuquerque, moving anywhere, was not an option, so he decided to control his anxiety by not speaking of earthquakes again, a Midwestern approach that he had employed successfully in other situations. It seemed to work in this case also, except on elevators, where his standard fear — that the doors would not open — now wedded itself to a new one. As he stood waiting for the elevator car to tremble and plunge, he began to have what he thought were panic attacks, but these, too, he approached like a Midwesterner, which meant that while everything exploded inside him, from the outside he looked like a man stoically riding the elevator.

He had ridden his first elevator on the Englund family vacation. In a rare gesture of enthusiasm, perhaps even love, his father had parked the Oldsmobile in a loading zone in downtown Minneapolis and pointed to a tall building nearby. Aaron thought that they would look out the car window at the building for a minute or two before driving on, but his father had instructed Aaron and his mother to go inside the building, which he said would surely have an elevator. When they got out of the car, he called after them, “Make it fast. We’re in a loading zone,” as though riding the elevator had been their idea.

Aaron did not know what an elevator even was, but he followed his mother into the building, where they stood in the lobby with a group of men in suits who stared at the two of them, dressed in shorts and grubby T-shirts. Everyone got on together, the other riders rising up around him like corn. When the elevator began to move, he took his mother’s hand and held it tightly while she laughed in a way that suggested she was not entirely at ease either.

On the way down, when they were alone, he asked his mother how the elevator worked. “Cables,” she said. “You know, ropes pulling it up and down.” He imagined people sitting above them, turning these ropes day after day.

“What if the ropes break?” he asked.

His mother showed him the numbers above the door, which flashed as they passed each floor. “Here’s what I want you to do,” she said. “Right after we pass the second floor, I want you to jump in the air as high as you can. That way, if the ropes break, you’ll be in the air when we crash.” He had done it, but that night, as he lay in bed in their motel room, he heard his mother telling his father the story, the two of them laughing. His father said something he did not understand and laughed again, and his mother said, “Jerry, come on. He’s a child. It was sweet.” Lying in bed, Aaron had felt her betrayal.

Aaron continued to think about earthquakes each time he passed beneath scaffolding or visited a museum or movie theater. Once he sat up from a deep sleep, sure that he had felt something, but everything around him was still. When an earthquake finally occurred, a small one, though he had not known this at the time, he was calm. It lasted six seconds. Automatically, he reached for the shoes he kept tied to his futon frame, in accordance with the earthquake preparation manual he had studied with his students.

“Why we must tie shoes on bed?” asked Cheng, a student from Taiwan, where they were accustomed to earthquakes. “Is for luck?”

“Luck?” Aaron said. He considered this. “No, it’s so you can find your shoes easily, even in the dark. Windows break during earthquakes, so it’s dangerous to walk around barefoot.” He wrote barefoot on the board.

“My friend from motorcycle club said me that the streets can be filling with glass, higher than my head even,” Paolo said.

“Your friend told you,” Aaron corrected him, but he was picturing the futility of shoes when faced with a snowbank of glass.

* * *

Aaron had not yet met the owner of the school, who lived up in Bodega Bay but kept an office on the first floor, walled off by glass and never used so that it resembled a museum diorama. A placard on the door read RICH PULKKA, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR. Mr. Pulkka claimed the school as a not-for-profit, a status that annoyed the teachers because they said he made plenty of profit, some of it fraudulently, though nobody dared to report him lest it mean trouble for the students. Aaron did not know exactly what the fraud entailed, but he thought it had to do with the attendance requirements for student visa holders. His roll sheets, for example, contained the names of several students who had not once appeared in class. He marked them absent, but when the sheets were returned to him each Monday morning, the As had been painstakingly turned into Ps, no doubt before the roster was photocopied for the official file.

Aaron deduced the sort of person that Pulkka was simply from observing how the building was maintained. It was like getting to know the flaws on a lover’s body, for there was something intimate about standing in the men’s room after having relieved himself to discover that the sinks worked, in order from left to right: cold only, hot only, not at all — which meant he had the option to either freeze or scald himself, or go with hands unwashed. One morning he came up the backstairs and found puddles of water pooled on the landing, yellow like urine, and when he went into the unused classroom across the hall from his in search of an eraser, he found mushrooms, at least a dozen, sprouting from the mold on the wall beneath the lone window, the sight of them oddly obscene.

When Aaron asked the other teachers what Pulkka was like, they laughed. “I’m the only one who’s met him,” Eugenia said. “Once, right after I started, he threw a faculty holiday party in the basement, but he drank too much and ended up sleeping with one of the instructors. Barbara. This was a problem because he lives with his girlfriend. Actually, she’s on the payroll, though no one’s met her either. He pretty quickly realized he better get rid of Barbara, which wasn’t hard because Barbara was a mess. There’d been complaints from the students for a while, but after the party, it came out that she’d gotten trashed with her students one night and took off her shirt right there in the bar in front of them.”

“Why would she do that?” Aaron asked, his question largely rhetorical. He knew that teachers were like everyone else: varying in their degree of competence and good judgment, not always able to keep their loneliness or dysfunction from pressing in on the workplace. Some of his colleagues, the younger ones, went out drinking with the students, the sort of drinking that made it nearly impossible to stand before the class the next day and make demands about homework and attendance. His own boundaries, he had been told — by other teachers, not students — were rigid. He agreed, though did not consider it a problem. He liked that his students were intimidated, just slightly, by him. He felt that a small dose of fear was conducive to learning. During his nearly twenty years as an ESL teacher, he had taught in a variety of places and knew that privately owned schools such as Pulkka’s were especially susceptible to unprofessionalism because they paid poorly and thus attracted a mixed bag of teachers: the inexperienced; the inept; the improperly credentialed; those in transition, like him; and those like Taffy, who preferred to remain on the profession’s periphery for personal reasons.

In the classroom next to his, Felix prepared students to take the TOEFL, an ESL exam on which they needed to do well in order to enter college here, but the truth was that Felix’s class offered very little preparation, for Felix prioritized having fun. His morning curriculum included showing movies, playing practical jokes on his students, and listening to music at a high volume. In the afternoons the students sat at their desks, taking practice exams if they were actually interested in improving their scores, and sleeping with their heads on their desks if they were not. Aaron had quickly realized that the TOEFL class was a holding pen for students who needed a student visa but had little interest in being students.

Aaron was familiar with men like Felix, a homely underachiever who had gone to Korea in his twenties to teach and found himself suddenly successful with women. He did not care that his success had nothing to do with who he was as a person and everything to do with his being American. That he had neither an interest in teaching nor aptitude did not prevent him from continuing on once he was back in the United States because the school afforded him a supply of sexual partners. When Aaron looked at the female students and then at Felix, he did not understand it, for not only was Felix unattractive but he seemed determined to accentuate his worst features. He wore T-shirts that fit snugly around his fleshy waist and a wig tied in a loose ponytail similar to that of John Adams. He was overly fond of accessories and wore a utility belt, to which he snapped or tied various nonnecessities: a money pouch, though he often borrowed bus fare; a walkie-talkie; a container of aspirin that rattled like a maraca when he walked; and a light of the sort that bicyclists wore after dark, nestled into the small of his back, flashing attention on his buttocks as he walked down the hallway or, more disconcertingly, stood at the urinals, urinating.

Aaron initially heard about Felix’s trysts from Taffy, but Felix himself had recently described for everyone in the faculty room how he had gotten caught breaking into the school with Akiko, one of his Japanese students, the night before. “We didn’t technically break in,” he clarified. “I still had the key from when I taught nights last semester. I just didn’t know Polka Dot changes the alarm code, like, all the time. But you know how he is — he doesn’t trust anyone.” Aaron wondered how Felix could think that his complaint had legitimacy, given that he had engaged in the very behavior that Pulkka was guarding against. “FYI, the alarm’s silent,” Felix added, as though sharing information meant to make them better teachers.

When Marla and the police arrived, he and Akiko were up in his classroom. He said it that way—“we were already up in my room”—as though the evening had involved nothing more than a scheduled tutorial. “We didn’t even hear them coming. Things got, you know, sort of loud.”

Aaron stood up then and left the faculty room, though it was too late. He could not erase the image of Felix bent over Akiko, naked but for his utility belt, the bike strobe pulsing as the two of them, teacher and student, worked away atop Felix’s desk.

* * *

Most weekends Aaron felt as if he were tumbling over a waterfall, floating and struggling for footing, and then Monday morning came, he entered his classroom, and the ground appeared beneath him again. He had wanted his life to change — had believed he might lose his mind if it did not — and just like that, it had. He had changed it. But after the initial euphoria, which reached its apex in Needles as he broke down the door of Jacob’s room, he felt discouraged. He thought of Walter often, with what seemed like grief some days and simple nostalgia others. He could not tell whether he missed him, the sum of him, but he knew he missed parts of their life together. He missed feeling like an adult in the world, cooking proper meals and eating them at a real dining room table while he reported on his day. He missed the comforting familiarity of knowing a person for twenty-three years: they had known how to occupy space together, how to be quiet together. He had thrown that away, and if he ever met someone new, they would have to start from scratch. They would have to learn how the other smelled first thing in the morning or when he was sick, how he smelled just after a bath or when he wanted sex. They would have to learn these smells and then how to be comfortable with them.

He did not miss sex with Walter. In fact, he did not miss sex at all. He felt far away from his body, from desire. The last time they had had sex was on Thanksgiving. Aaron had eaten too much, yet when Walter touched him, his mouth still greasy from the turkey, he gave in to Walter’s need. It was still light out, and as Walter moved behind him, he could hear the neighbors tossing a football in their backyard. Afterward, as they lay on the king-size bed, Walter said, “Well, someone certainly was thankful,” affecting an arch tone, both the tone and the words taking Aaron back to those early days with Walter and his group of middle-aged, closeted friends. Walter burrowed his nose under Aaron’s arm while Aaron stared out the window, watching the football arc through the air. He felt something wet, salty, on his lips and realized he was crying. He knew then that he needed to be gone by Christmas.

Aaron did not miss the king-size bed. He liked this bed, a twin-size futon, which reminded him of the bed he had slept in as a boy. When he and his mother first arrived in Mortonville, they had rented a furnished house from Mr. Rehnquist, where Aaron had occupied the lower half of a bunk bed. He used to tuck a blanket under the top mattress and let it hang down around his bed like a curtain, pretending it was a house or a cave or a boat, this last his favorite because he liked imagining storms that flung the boat about. In the midst of the storms, he would throw himself from the bed to the floor, where he pretended that he was swimming, staying afloat and saving his own life because there was nobody else to save him.

8

The day Aaron’s mother picked him up from his aunt and uncle’s house, after she unlocked their front door and they stepped inside, she said, “Does it feel strange to be home? It’s the longest you’ve been away, you know. Almost a month.”

It did feel strange, though stranger still was the disarray in which he found the house: dirty dishes stacked in the sink, mail piled high on the counter, a box of clothes open in front of the hallway closet. He had believed they were returning home together, but he saw then that this was not the case. Nor could he make sense of the mess. His mother had always washed dishes as soon as they finished with them. When she brought in the mail, she did not set it on the counter to be dealt with later. He had seen her toss the whole stack in the trash because she cared more about neatness than bills or correspondence.

Her own parents were pack rats. Perched on his bed one night, she had told him this as if it were a bedtime story. He had met them just once. “I vowed never to take you to that house again,” she said. “It’s no place for a child.” He wanted to point out that she had lived there as a child, but instead he asked what a pack rat was, and she said it meant that her parents were burying themselves alive beneath stacks of paper and plastic containers and instruction manuals for appliances that had stopped working years ago. When they did die, several years later, it was not because of garbage. His grandfather’s heart gave out on a Monday, his grandmother’s succumbing by Thursday. Aaron, who was ten, stayed with the Rehnquists while his mother went to oversee the joint funeral, and when she came back, she said, “Well, that’s that,” and they did not speak of his grandparents again.

His mother came home from the hospital and walked through their house like a stranger, running her hands along walls as she searched for light switches, bumping hard against the edges of things, the couch, the refrigerator, the sliding doors that led into the backyard. On his third day back, as they sat eating pork and beans for breakfast yet again, she announced, “Aaron, we’re moving,” and though he feared change, he felt relieved, for he saw that they could not remain in Moorhead, where he had always lived but where his mother could no longer find her way.

They were going to a town called Mortonville. Before he was born, his mother and father had spent a week there at a fishing resort run by a couple who had probably purchased the place with high hopes, the way people do, though by the time his parents stayed, the couple was far past the honeymoon phase of ownership. The resort, which was several miles outside of Mortonville, was called Last Resort. His mother said their cabin was a dark, filthy box, and though she had brought along food to cook their meals, she had become queasy at the thought of eating off the plates she found in the kitchen. She pictured other people using them, people who gutted fish, picked at themselves, and rarely bathed. When she lifted a water glass to her mouth to drink, she was sure she smelled stale milk and fish. They had ended up going into Mortonville twice a day to eat at the Trout Café, an unexpected expense that so enraged his father that he ended their stay early, packing up the car in a huff and refusing to speak to Aaron’s mother, even when she begged him to pull over so that she could vomit. They did not know it yet, but she was pregnant. Each time she told Aaron the story, she ended it the same way: “Later I couldn’t help but wonder if it wasn’t you that made me so sick.” She would sigh, and as he got older he understood that she thought him responsible for all of it, not just the queasiness and vomiting but his father’s anger and their abrupt departure, precursors of the life they would have as a family.

After his mother announced that they were moving, she said, “Now’s as good a time as any,” and she unfolded a slip of paper with the telephone number of a man who had a house to rent in Mortonville. She did not like telephones, an aversion that Aaron would come to share, so she spent a few minutes pacing before she dialed. The man with the house answered. He did most of the talking, and when Aaron’s mother hung up, the only part of the conversation that she related to him was the man’s cheerful last words: “Let’s just meet at the café in town. You’ll never find the house on your own because I guarantee I give the worst directions in this entire county.” Aaron looked forward to meeting the man. He had never met anyone who actually bragged about being bad at things.

“That’s him, I bet,” his mother said when they pulled up in front of the café one week later, pointing to a short man who was standing with two tall men. “Our new landlord.” The man removed a handkerchief from the back pocket of his overalls and wiped his hands, rubbing each finger carefully, as though he’d just eaten something greasy, and then he came over to the Oldsmobile, where Aaron was struggling to extricate himself from the household items that his mother had packed around him.

“Name’s Randolph,” the man said. He shook both of their hands. “Randolph Rehnquist. You probably saw my initials by the train tracks when you came into town. Got my own crossing. Course, you’re welcome to use it.” He was bald and had a habit of removing his cap when he laughed, as though it were improper to laugh with one’s hat on. “Looks like you brought the necessities,” he said. He nodded at the car, which was filled with clothing and bed linens, kitchenware and a few keepsakes.

His mother had also called these things the necessities. “Only take the necessities,” she had instructed, but Aaron did not understand what made something a necessity. Each time he brought out one of his belongings and asked, “Is this a necessity?” she looked up tiredly and said, “If you can’t live without it, then just pack it. Okay?”

“What about my bed?” he asked, but she explained that their new house had furniture that they could use for now; they would get settled and then come back for everything else. But as he watched her wedge plates under the seats and stack frying pans and a colander where his feet would go, he realized that there would be no back-and-forth between this old life and the new.

The three of them went into the café and sat in a booth, and a man came over with a pot of coffee. Mr. Rehnquist said, “Frank,” and the man said, “Randolph,” and that was the end of their conversation.

It was from this man, Frank, that Aaron’s mother would buy the café two years later, but that day, Aaron had no reason to think of the café as part of his future, only his past. His father had sat in these booths. He had not been dead yet, and Aaron had not been alive. He could not make sense of this. His mother did not tell Mr. Rehnquist that she had once eaten a week’s worth of meals at this café with her husband. She did not say anything about a husband. When Aaron got older, he realized his mother had known that it would not do to arrive and begin talking about parade floats and dead husbands. Of course she knew that in a town this size a woman who showed up with a young son and no husband invited speculation, but Mr. Rehnquist was not the prying sort. He talked about himself instead, in a friendly, uncomplicated way. He told them that his former tenants had left suddenly. The Packers, he called them. “Packed up and left,” he said. “That’s what you get with Packers.”

He laughed, but Aaron’s mother, fresh from the hospital, was not thinking about things like laughing along companionably. Mr. Rehnquist didn’t seem to mind. He told them that they could have the house for six months, a year tops, because he was waiting for his son to get married. “When a man gets married, he needs a house,” he said, addressing Aaron as if this were a matter for his immediate consideration.

They sipped their drinks. “Yut, well, I suppose then,” said Mr. Rehnquist, and somehow Aaron’s mother knew that this meant it was time to leave. They drove out of town, Mr. Rehnquist’s truck crawling along in front of them, turned onto a gravel road and then into a driveway, at the end of which lay a house. His mother shut off the engine and stared. “What do you think?” she asked. All around them were fields.

“I think we’ll like it here,” he said.

“I think so too.” She reached over to pat his leg, but her hand curled into a fist and she instead knocked on his knee three times.

Mr. Rehnquist said that he wanted to point out some things before they went inside—features of the property he called them — like the birch trees on the other side of the empty garden and a rusty wheelbarrow that he said they should feel free to use. He nodded at the house. “This here’s the house where I was raised, and that’s my field over there,” he said, sweeping his arm toward the field across the road.

“What do you grow?” Aaron’s mother asked in her making-conversation voice.

“Oh, corn mainly. That’s about all I know how to grow.” He laughed. “My wife’s the brains in the family. She’s a schoolteacher. Fourth grade.” He studied Aaron. “How old are you then, Aaron?” he asked.

“I’m five,” Aaron said. “I’m going to be in kindergarten this year.”

“Going to be?” said Mr. Rehnquist. “School started over a month ago.”

“Yes,” Aaron said. “I’m getting a late start.” This was how he had heard his mother describe it when she called the school in Mortonville to let them know he would be enrolling.

Mr. Rehnquist took off his hat and laughed. “Miss Meeks,” he announced. “That’s the kiddie-garden teacher. I guarantee she’s anything but meek.” Aaron did not know the word meek. Mr. Rehnquist gave a half chuckle and exposed his head again. “Good luck,” he said gravely and winked.

* * *

Aaron’s new room contained three beds, two of them bunked, the third beneath the window. That night, he climbed into the bottom bunk and fell asleep quickly, exhausted from unpacking and adjusting to a new house. When he awakened, he was not sure how long he had been asleep or what had roused him. He thought it was the silence. His mother had said it would take time to adjust to the stillness of the country after living in town his whole life. He drank the water that she had set by his bed. Then, because the hallway light was on, he got up to look for her.

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 from 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.

“Remember, children,” Miss Meeks said, “in my class there are no show-offs.”

His mother was waiting for him after school. On the way home, she walked far ahead of him, only turning once to ask how his day had gone.

“Okay,” he said, and she said, “Just okay?”

“Yes,” he said.

“What did you do?”

“I answered questions,” he said.

“Questions about what?” He could tell that she was interested.

“Moorhead,” he said. “Paul Bunyan.” He did not say his dead father.

* * *

Aaron did not know where his mother went after she left him at school each morning, but she was always back at noon, waiting for him on foot as the other children boarded the bus and rode home. This routine — walking, school, walking — became the order of their days, one he grew to appreciate because his mother seemed happiest as they walked. Their afternoons also followed a new pattern. When they arrived back at the house, his mother went into her bedroom and closed the door, and he waited — at the kitchen table or in his bedroom — while she rested. She never offered to make lunch first, but he did not mind because he knew that she was tired. Besides, he liked to prepare his own lunch. He always made the same thing, saltine crackers dipped in ketchup.

“I’ll have a dozen today,” he would say, out loud, to himself. Dozen was the word for twelve. He would count out twelve crackers, which he lined up around the rim of the plate like fallen dominoes. In the middle, he squirted the ketchup. After he finished eating, he drank a glass of water, gulping loudly, a sound that had always angered his father.

“How am I supposed to eat with you making that goddamn noise?” his father used to yell. “It’s like listening to a clogged drain.” One time, his father had jumped up from the supper table and retrieved a red plastic bottle from under the sink. Gripping Aaron’s head in the crook of his elbow, he tried to force Aaron’s mouth open as he held the red bottle above it. What had frightened Aaron most was the way his father trembled.

“Jerry, stop,” his mother had said, her voice low and scared. His father had stopped. Years later, when Aaron asked his mother about that night, she explained that it was Drano his father had threatened to pour down his throat. “He never would have done it,” she assured him. “He was just like that, always trying to scare people into changing.”

Mr. Rehnquist was part of their new routine also. On the first day of each month, he came by after supper to pick up the rent check. During these visits, he seemed awkward, not jolly and at ease as he had been the day they met him. Aaron’s mother said that it probably made him shy to be a guest in the house that he’d lived in as a boy. “Why?” Aaron had asked, and his mother said, “Well, there are things that happen in a house, things you don’t always like to think about. Maybe Mr. Rehnquist remembers those things when he comes here.”

Mr. Rehnquist’s visits always ended at the kitchen table with the adults drinking coffee while Mr. Rehnquist quizzed Aaron about school, about what he was learning and how he was getting on with Miss Meeks, the latter a question to which Aaron gave brief replies because he did not want Mr. Rehnquist to think less of him for failing to win over his teacher.

“How’s crazy Betty behaving?” Mr. Rehnquist asked one night in the silence after they’d finished discussing school.

“You’ll have to ask Aaron,” his mother said. “They’re good friends, you know.”

Aaron realized only then that Mr. Rehnquist was referring to Betty Otto, who lived in the house behind them, but he did not understand why his mother would say they were friends. It was true they sometimes chatted, but he did not think that chatting constituted a friendship, though he did not really understand what friendship involved. His mother said it was natural to want the company of others, sounding almost suspicious of those who did not, despite her own friendlessness.

“She still busy with that garden?” Mr. Rehnquist asked him.

“Yes,” Aaron said.

“She’s also busy shooting off her gun,” his mother said.

“She shoots squirrels because they ruin her garden,” Aaron said.

This garden lay on the other side of a row of tall pine trees that served as a boundary marker. When they first moved in, Aaron had often knelt on the bed in his new room, staring out the window at the garden and the house beyond. He soon discovered that a woman lived there, thin with milky skin and curly hair as red as a clown’s. She had a dog that she usually kept tied to a pole beside the doghouse, which sat in front of the real house like its shadow. Aaron always noted the dog’s location because he was afraid of dogs. Those first several weeks, he had spied on the house as he waited for his mother to finish resting, until one afternoon he knew that he could not stay inside even one second longer. He rose and went out into the front yard, where he paced with frantic anticipation. When nothing happened, he walked around to the backyard and stood in the knee-high grass beside the pine trees.

“What are you looking at, little boy?” called a voice. He moved closer and saw the woman, stretched out on her side in the garden. She was wearing a large straw hat.

“My name is Aaron,” he said, then added, “Nothing.”

The woman sat up and removed the hat in order to scratch vigorously at her scalp. “My name is Betty Otto,” she said. “You may call me Miss Otto, as I am an unmarried woman, or you may call me by my full name, but you may not call me by my Christian name alone because I do not abide such familiarity from children.” She waved him closer. “I don’t recognize you. You must not be one of those awful Packer boys.”

“No,” Aaron said. “The Packers moved away.”

“Good riddance,” she said. “They were unusually mean children.” He could tell that she considered all children inherently mean.

“What did they do that was mean?” he asked.

“Well,” she said, struggling to her knees and then her feet. “First, they were cruel to Princess.” She pointed at the dog, which sat, untied, at the edge of the garden. “She is pure German shepherd, which you will realize if you know anything about dogs. I’ve had her since she was a pup, and in that time I’ve spoken to her only in German. It is her mother tongue and the only language she responds to.”

The dog lifted its head. “Princess,” Betty Otto called. “Heil!” The dog stood and trotted along the perimeter of the garden to its mistress. When it barked at Aaron, Betty Otto said “Heil!” again, and the dog fell back on its haunches, whimpering.

“You see?” Betty Otto said. “But those Packer boys insisted on screaming at her in English, which confused her, so she bit one of them. Right here.” She tapped her own cheekbone. “Just missed the eye.” She sounded pleased. “The parents tried to pretend it was my fault, but I wasn’t having any of that.”

“Maybe the Packers didn’t know German,” Aaron said.

“Nonsense. Did you ever meet the Packers?” Aaron shook his head. “Well then. After Princess bit the boy, I told them to stay on their side of the trees, but do you know what those horrid boys did?”

“No,” said Aaron.

Betty Otto bent and scratched the dog’s ears. “Those hoodlums came out in the middle of the night and moved the trees, a good foot and a half, I’d say. Just look how close they are to my garden now.” She pointed to the garden, as though this were proof. “They didn’t think I’d see them,” she continued, “but I was expecting them. I waited right over there.” She pointed at a shed. “I fired off a few shots, just to scare them. You should have seen them run.” She gave a pleased chuckle, which Princess echoed with a growl.

“Is that why they moved?” Aaron asked.

“They moved so that Mr. Rehnquist’s son could move in,” said Betty Otto.

“But we moved in,” said Aaron.

“Mr. Rehnquist’s just teaching his son a lesson. You’ll be gone soon enough.” She regarded him slyly. “You know, your mother spends a lot of time outside at night.”

He did not know this. “Would you shoot at her?” he asked.

“She just looks at the sky. Would you shoot someone for looking at the sky?”

* * *

Miss Meeks never warmed to Aaron. Everything about him seemed to displease her: his politeness and earnestness and timidity, his overwhelming need to learn. She did not hide her feelings, and this set a tone, the model for acceptable behavior toward Aaron Englund, the new boy, which his classmates emulated. All of it, Aaron concealed from his mother. The next year, he and the other students moved across the hallway to Mrs. Lindskoog’s room. He still saw Miss Meeks and greeted her courteously each morning. She sniffed in return, crossed her arms, and nodded, but when the children who had been her pets appeared, she hugged them and said how much she missed them. These same children stood around on the playground laughing about the thick veins that covered Mrs. Lindskoog’s calves and about the way they could hear her urinating inside the tiny bathroom attached to their classroom, everyone falling silent when she went in.

“Aaron lacks enthusiasm,” Mrs. Lindskoog wrote on his first report card.

“Lacks enthusiasm?” his mother muttered scornfully, pointing at the string of Excellents and Very Goods that Mrs. Lindskoog had also given him, but Aaron knew that Mrs. Lindskoog had offered this criticism to help him, just as she hoped to improve his printing by gripping his hand tightly in hers and forcing it down on the page.

Upon entering first grade, he grew quickly enamored of phonics, which taught him that words were not just bunches of letters clumped together arbitrarily. Of course, there were exceptions, groupings that didn’t add up in a logical way, but he came to accept, almost relish, these minor glitches in an otherwise perfect system. It was why the word itself—phonics, with that odd ph—seemed so appropriate. As they walked home each day, his mother usually inquired what he had done in school, to which he replied, “We did phonics.” Sometimes, he followed this with a question related to what he had learned, a question such as “Do you prefer hard g or soft g?”

“Soft,” his mother had immediately answered, for she had no preference and knew that thinking about it would not reveal one.

“Really?” he said, disappointed. “I prefer hard.”

“They’re both fine sounds,” she said. “You wouldn’t have giraffes without soft.”

It had not occurred to him that things could not — even did not — exist without names. “What would happen to them?” he asked finally.

“Who?” said his mother. She was often distracted.

“The giraffes,” he said. “What would happen to them?”

“Nothing would happen to them. They just wouldn’t be giraffes.”

“What would they be?”

“Well, of course they would be giraffes. They just wouldn’t be called giraffes.”

A farmer drove by, lifting his index finger at them, which was how people waved in Mortonville. Aaron waved back.

His mother had told him once that his grandmother, the pack rat, had phoned the hospital right after he was born to suggest a name for him. Lars. Sometimes he tried to think of himself as a boy who came when his mother called “Lars!” who printed Lars at the top of each page of homework and was intimate with a capital L. No, he had concluded, Lars would be a different boy and there would be no Aaron.

Another time he asked his mother, “Do you know about sometimes y?” But that time she was tired from doing nothing all day.

“Why what?” she said.

“The letter y,” he said, about to explain, but she turned to him and snapped, “No nonsense today, Aaron.” After a few more steps, she said, “I’m not myself. I have a headache,” so they walked the rest of the way in silence.

The headaches were why his mother rested so much. He had seen her lying in bed pushing her palms against the sides of her head in an attempt to make the pounding stop. He had never had a headache, not that he could remember, but he knew that she was in pain. He was good at imagining what others were feeling. It came naturally to him, this desire to be inside someone else’s head, to escape his own.

One afternoon he tiptoed down the hallway to his mother’s room, carrying a cold washcloth. He’d wrung it out carefully: if he twisted too much, it would be tepid before he reached her, but neither did he want water running down her face and onto the pillow. In the last year, he’d become an expert at fashioning the perfect washcloth. His mother was lying with her eyes closed in the king-size bed that had belonged to the Packer boys’ parents. When he laid the washcloth on her eyes, she said, “Did I ever tell you about my name?” Her lips moved, but with her eyes covered the words did not seem to belong to her.

He lay down beside her and stared at the ceiling. “No, you didn’t tell me,” he said.

“Do you know what missionaries are?” she asked. He did know. His aunt had corresponded with missionaries. She had shown him the envelopes bearing stamps that were colorful and strange. “Well,” she said, “when I was just a bit older than you, maybe eight or nine, a missionary came to our town to raise money for her mission work.”

“To Park Rapids?” he asked. Until recently, he had thought the town was called Park Rabbits, which he imagined as a grassy place full of benches and trees, people sharing picnics, and, of course, rabbits.

“Yes, of course to Park Rapids,” his mother said impatiently. “Our teacher, Mrs. Olsen, invited the missionary to talk to us about the country where she’d lived for years. Guatemala, it was called. All of my classmates laughed when she said it. I didn’t laugh, but that didn’t really matter because the others did.”

“Why did they laugh?”

“Because of the way she said it. Gua-teh-mal-ah,” his mother intoned, imitating the missionary. “But they were really laughing because they were scared.”

“Why were they scared?”

“Because people feel scared sometimes when they have to think about the world.”

“Why?”

“I guess because there’s a lot to think about,” his mother said.

“Does it scare you to think about the world?” he asked.

Instead of answering, his mother said, “She was an unusual woman. Do you know what she was wearing? Denim jeans. It was maybe 1950, and the female teachers and students all had to wear dresses. That’s just now changing — do the girls in your class still wear dresses?”

“Some of them wear scooter skirts.”

“What in the world is a scooter skirt?”

Aaron paused, feeling his face become hot. “It’s a special skirt so the boys can’t see the girls’ underwear. It has shorts underneath.”

“Do the boys try to see the girls’ underwear?”

“Some of them do. At recess usually, but also when they’re getting on the bus.”

“Aaron, have you ever tried to look at a girl’s underwear?” his mother asked.

“No,” he said, which was the truth. Sometimes he sat on his bed and studied his underwear, which was white and had a discreet opening for his penis, but he could find nothing interesting about it. If he ever became friends with any of the boys, he thought he would ask why they did it, spent so much time and risked getting in trouble as well for a glimpse of something that surely was as ordinary as their own.

“You know how disappointed I’d be if I heard you were involved with anything like that,” his mother said. She pressed on the washcloth with her fingers.

“Should I fix it?” he asked.

“Please,” she whispered. He lifted the cloth gently and went down the hallway to the kitchen sink, where he thought the water ran cooler.

“You were telling me about the missionary,” he said when he returned, “and about your name.” He settled the washcloth back across his mother’s eyes, and she whimpered.

“Well, we came in from recess, and there she was at the front of the room. We all got quiet right away. Even Mrs. Olsen seemed a little scared of her.”

“Because she was wearing jeans?”

“I guess the jeans were part of it. We just knew she was different somehow, and then after everyone stopped laughing about Gua-teh-mal-ah, she pointed at the map and said, ‘Well, children, a nickel to the student who can actually point out Guatemala.’ We all just sat there, and she looked at us, one by one, challenging us to look away. I couldn’t help it — I looked down before she even got to me.

“Finally, when she’d out-stared us all, she shouted, ‘Ha!’ and slapped her thigh. We all jumped. We weren’t used to adults acting that way. She said, ‘I see that your uniformly maintained ignorance does not amuse you nearly as much as the names of countries about which you know nothing, not even where they are located in this great world of ours.’ Then she turned to Mrs. Olsen and said, ‘I am wasting my time here.’ ”

“What did Mrs. Olsen say?”

“Nothing. That was the worst part. She just bowed her head. I couldn’t bear it because I knew where Guatemala was. In the evenings after I finished my schoolwork, I was allowed to spend ten minutes studying my father’s atlas. Mrs. Olsen knew this. She often sat with me at lunch, quizzing me on geography, but I was so shy in those days, and she didn’t want to put me on the spot.”

“Did you go up and show her?” He wanted the story to end well, wanted his mother to rise as the hero and Mrs. Olsen to be redeemed.

“I didn’t even raise my hand. I just ran up and pointed to Guatemala. You should have seen me. I was shaking so hard that my finger pattered against the map, but when the missionary reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a nickel, I took it. Then, as I turned to go back to my seat, she said, ‘What might your name be?’ I told her, and she said, ‘Ah, Dough-lor-ace,’ so grandly I didn’t even recognize my own name. Dough-lor-ace.” His mother laughed softly. “Aaron, do you know what my name means in Spanish?”

“No,” he said. It shocked him to think of people saying his mother’s name but meaning something else altogether.

“Pains. Dolores means pains. Isn’t that amazing? That people in other countries, countries like this Guatemala, are walking around saying my name when they stub their toes, or cut themselves, or visit the doctor. I think about that every day, Aaron — how lucky I was to have that missionary visit our class.”

10

On a July morning two years after Aaron and his mother moved to Mortonville, she announced at breakfast, “Today, we’re going on an excursion.” He did not know what to make of this. During these two years, they had traveled no farther than Florence, which was just eleven miles down the road, the place where people went to buy shoes or visit the dentist. “Come on,” his mother said. “I want you ready in one Adam-12.”

“I know how to tell time,” he said.

His mother said nothing, so he gave in and asked where they were going.

“We’re going to visit an old friend of mine. Gloria. I met her years ago, before your father even.”

“Did my father know her also?” He did not know why this interested him, just that it did.

“Yes, but they didn’t like each other, and Jerry didn’t want me to be friends with her.” Aaron liked when his mother referred to his father as Jerry, because it usually meant she was going to talk to him as if he were an adult.

When they were in the car and driving, Aaron asked, “How did you meet Gloria?”

“I was nineteen. I’d gone down to the Cities to work and I got the job with the electric company. Gloria worked there also, so we ended up getting an apartment together, but when I met your father, he didn’t want me living with Gloria anymore, didn’t even want me around her, so I quit that job and got a live-in situation doing housework and cooking for a family. Mr. and Mrs. Gould. They were Jews.” She paused. “They were nice to me. They insisted I take Sunday mornings off for church, and I didn’t have the heart to tell them I’d left home to escape Sunday mornings. I just thanked them, and every Sunday morning I left the house and went away for two hours.”

“Where did you go?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. I took walks. I went bowling and out to breakfast with your father.”

“What happened to those people? The Juice?”

“Not juice. Jews,” his mother said, drawing out the vowel. “Your father made me quit that job also — because they were Jews. At least that’s what he said was the reason, but I’d been there a year already, so I think it was something else.”

“Like what?”

His mother turned from the road to smile at him, and he saw that she was wearing lipstick. “I think he just didn’t like how happy I was with the Goulds.”

A memory came to him, of his father leaning toward him at the Paul Bunyan Park in Bemidji, saying, “Look, son. There go some Jews.”

“Were there Jews at the Paul Bunyan Park?” he asked.

His mother looked over at him again. “Sometimes you ask the oddest questions, Aaron. I suppose there were Jews there.” She paused, but he did not realize that she was waiting for him to explain his question. Finally, she went on with her story.

“The Goulds had big parties, twenty or thirty people, and I did everything — cooked, baked, served — and you know what? I was good at it. All of their friends told them how lucky they were to have me. And when I told them I was leaving, Mrs. Gould cried. Your grandparents didn’t cry when I left home. On my last night, they took me out for supper because they said it wouldn’t be right for me to cook. We had wine, and Mr. Gould made a toast and said they wished me all the best. While we were waiting for our desserts, he pushed an envelope across the table to me. He said it was just a little something to express their gratitude, but I didn’t realize it was money, so I opened it — right there in front of them — and they both looked away. Inside was a brand-new fifty-dollar bill. Fifty dollars for no reason, and I chose your father.”

His mother was quiet then.

* * *

They drove for a long time, hours he thought. Eventually, his mother took a piece of paper from her purse and held it above the steering wheel, studying it as she drove. They passed through a small town, and she glanced at the paper and began counting mailboxes. Just past the sixth one, she turned right onto a narrow gravel road, but after a few minutes it forked in front of them. She stopped the car and tossed the paper onto the seat between them. “Well, what do you think?” she asked Aaron. “Left or right?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

She spotted a tractor that had just crawled into view in the field to the left of them. “Stay put,” she said, as if he were a different sort of boy, daring and naughty, and not the boy he was, a boy overwhelmed by open spaces. She climbed down into the grassy ditch beside the road, making her way toward the tractor. When Aaron saw the man driving it lift his hand at her in greeting, he picked up the paper from the seat. Along the bottom was a map, hand-drawn with directions. The short letter on top was written in cursive, which he was just learning.

Dear Dolores [it read],

Surely you don’t expect condolences for him from me. Still, I’m glad to hear from you. I’ve been living back on the farm with Clarence, who needs some help. Mother died several years ago. A visit would be [here a word had been scribbled out completely and replaced with another] fine.

Try to come alone. We have lots of catching up to do.

Gloria

When his mother got back in the car, she took the right side of the fork and soon pulled up beside a tilting mailbox. “Does it say Bjorklund?” she asked, and Aaron climbed partway out his open window to get a better look. The letters were faded, but he could make out a capital B.

“I think so,” he said.

Before he could pull his head back inside, his mother stepped on the gas. His forehead jolted hard against the window frame, but she seemed not to notice. She turned into the driveway and followed it between a stand of trees, curving past a school bus with missing front tires, weeds growing up around it.

“Why do they have a bus?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” said his mother.

“Can I look at it?”

“No.” She spoke sharply. “Later maybe.”

They stopped in front of the farmhouse, which was gray and sat on a small incline that sloped up from the driveway. As they got out of the car, five dogs emerged from a barn at the end of the driveway and ran toward them, barking and growling. Aaron started to get back inside the car, but a woman came out onto the porch and yelled at the dogs, and they stopped barking and began to wag their tails. The woman stepped off the porch and stood with her hands on her hips, regarding Aaron and his mother. She was not old, but her hair, clipped in a bowl style, was the same weathered gray as the house. She wore striped overalls with a white tank top cut low under the arms and crusty work boots, and her torso was like a tree trunk, solid with no variation in circumference to mark her hips or waist. Aaron had never seen such muscles on a woman: it was as if someone had slit open her arms and stitched oranges inside.

“Gloria,” his mother said, holding her purse up in front of her.

The woman ducked her head. “Dee,” she replied. She did not step closer.

“This is Aaron,” his mother said.

The woman ducked her head again, said, “Aaron” and “You’d better come in then,” and they followed her up the porch steps to the door, where his mother gave him a shove so that he entered first, tripping slightly into the room.

There were doilies everywhere, on the furniture and under knickknacks and even hanging over the couch, that one the size of a car tire and stiff with starch. “I learned to tat a few years ago,” the woman said, sounding apologetic.

His mother fingered one of the doilies. “You were always good with your hands,” she said.

A flush spread from Gloria’s neck to her chin and cheeks. She spun and left the room. Aaron’s mother settled on the couch, patting it to indicate that he should join her, but he remained standing. He did not feel at ease in other people’s homes. To demonstrate that she did, his mother lifted a bowl of walnuts from the coffee table and rummaged through it, selecting one, which she fit into the nutcracker. It resembled the vise in his father’s workshop. As his mother turned the handle, a large screw applied pressure to the nut. Aaron drew closer, waiting for the nut to burst, but when it did, he still jumped, his heart knocking hard in his chest. He looked up, and there was a dwarf. The dwarf sat in a wheelchair, perched atop a cushion. He wore a bright red shirt buttoned to the very top, the deep creases along both sleeves pointing the way to his inordinately large head. His hair was the color of the rust that collected on cars that had faced numerous Minnesota winters, and it clashed — wonderfully! — with his shirt and with the lurid pinks and purples of the afghan wrapped like a skirt around his legs. His feet, clad in black sandals over brown socks, dangled just above the footrests. All of these features Aaron noted only later, for he could not stop staring at the man’s nostrils, from which protruded tusks, slick like melting icicles. The man scowled at Aaron.

“This is Clarence,” Gloria said. “My brother.” She placed a hand atop the man’s head, and he scowled again.

“I’m pleased to meet you, Clarence,” Aaron’s mother said. She rose and went to shake his hand.

“Clary has really been looking forward to meeting you,” Gloria said. “Haven’t you, Clary?”

He grimaced at Aaron a bit longer before turning to Aaron’s mother. “Quite,” he said and took her outstretched hand. “Dolores, Sister has told me a good deal about you. I understand that you are widowed?” His voice was high and nasal, but he had acquired the dual habits of enunciating and speaking slowly, pausing to breathe through his mouth. Aaron’s mother nodded, her hand still gripped by his. “From what Sister has told me of your late husband, it would seem very little grieving is required.” He released her hand. “Hit by a pack of Shriners, Sister claims. Can this be true?”

He looked coyly up at Aaron’s mother, who nodded uncertainly. Clarence laughed, which triggered a coughing bout.

“Poor Clary,” Gloria said. “He has such trouble breathing these days.” She patted his head again. “Why don’t you take Aaron to your room and show him your collection?”

“They are called archives, Sister,” Clarence said. “And I am quite certain that they would be of little interest to a fellow his age.” He glared at Aaron. Gloria bent and whispered in her brother’s ear. “Fine, but will you push me, Sister?” he said in a whining, peevish voice.

“Aaron can push you,” said Aaron’s mother. “I think he’d enjoy that.” Aaron could think of nothing he would enjoy less, but he knew of no appropriate way to express his reservations, so he positioned himself behind the chair and gripped its handles. It was heavy, but he managed to push it across the room while Clarence gave orders.

“They want to be alone, you know,” Clarence informed him, but Aaron, who was focused on maneuvering the chair down a narrow hallway, did not reply.

“Are you afraid of me?” Clarence asked a moment later.

“Yes,” Aaron replied, truthfully.

“Because of my tusks, no doubt. I noticed you staring at them. Your mother, on the other hand, feels obligated to avert her eyes. Tell me, young Aaron, at which do you suppose I take more offense — your fascination or your mother’s revulsion?”

“Are they like elephant tusks?” Aaron asked. He did not fully understand Clarence’s question.

Clarence snorted. “Elephant tusks are made of ivory, which is quite sought after in most places in the world, while mine are nothing more than adenoids run amok. You may touch one if you like, but only if you are extremely careful.”

Aaron came from behind the wheelchair and leaned against the left armrest, steadying himself. Clarence’s eyes were closed, but as Aaron placed his index finger against the nearest tusk, Clarence sighed, the air from his nostrils rippling across Aaron’s finger. “Does that hurt?” Aaron asked.

“On the contrary,” Clarence said. “You have an exceedingly light touch.”

Aaron stroked the tusk once, then retracted his hand. “Do they grow?” he asked.

“Indeed they do — and far too fast. I had them removed just a few years ago, but I fear that another operation is imminent.”

Aaron continued to lean against Clarence’s wheelchair, gazing at the tusks. “I love them,” he said.

* * *

The walls of Clarence’s room were covered with books, the spines of which faced inward. “If you turn the books around,” Aaron said, “it will be easier.” He spent a good deal of time in the school library and knew how it was done.

“What will be easier?” inquired Clarence, who sat where Aaron had parked him, before a large desk.

“It will be easier to find the book you want.”

“I want all of these books,” Clarence said. “That is, in fact, why I purchased them. When I wish to read, I simply select one.” He picked a book up from his desk and beckoned Aaron over. On its cover was a black-and-white photograph of two girls: twins. “This book,” he told Aaron, “arrived in the mail several weeks ago. It is a masterpiece by one Diane Arbus. Do you know of her?” Aaron shook his head. “Sister wanted it out of the house immediately. She’s not prudish, but her spirit is a bit”—he paused, thinking—“compromised we shall say, for lack of a more precise word.”

He opened the book and thumbed through it, Aaron looking over his shoulder. The book, Aaron noted with surprise, consisted entirely of photographs.

“What is your opinion of this fellow?” Clarence asked, holding up a photograph of a bare-chested man wearing a fedora. A towel was draped over the man’s lap, and a few wisps of hair curled from his underarm. He was small, like Clarence.

“Who is he?” Aaron asked.

“According to the caption, he is a Mexican dwarf. Beyond that, I know nothing of him. It is the photographer who has captured my interest. In fact, I have composed a letter to her. Would you care to hear it?”

Aaron nodded, and Clarence extracted a sheet of onionskin from the top desk drawer and began to read.

Dear Miss Arbus,

I am a recent admirer of your work, a book of which was sent me by a friend in Wisconsin, a man of normal stature. I reside on a farm in central Minnesota with my elder sister, Gloria Bjorklund, who, in addition to being a devoted steward of the land, is quite skilled in the art of doily-making.

My reason for writing is twofold. First, I would like to express my appreciation for your photographs, particularly those featuring nudists. I have long disapproved of nudism, yet found myself oddly moved by these photos.

I come, now, to my second point — namely, that I am a dwarf. Moreover, I have been endowed with a pair of protuberances — some would call them tusks — that have begun growing in recent years from the vicinity of my nostrils. I should add, for the sake of full disclosure, that I have no formal training in front of the camera. Nonetheless, I would welcome any inquiries on your part.

Sincerely,

Clarence A. Bjorklund

“Did she write back?” Aaron asked.

“She did not, for I did not mail the letter. You see,” Clarence explained, his voice cracking, “Miss Arbus is no longer.”

“Is she dead?” Aaron asked.

“Quite,” Clarence responded. “Barbiturates. Slit wrists. Nothing as grand as a parade float and a pack of Shriners, though equally effective.” He refolded the letter and returned it to the desk drawer.

“The Shriners didn’t kill my father,” Aaron said. “The doctor said he cracked his skull on the street when he fell off the float.”

“Ah, but that is really more accuracy than I care to be presented with. Come, let us speak of something else. I understand that these Shriners are involved in the circus business. Certainly a boy of your age must have an interest in circuses.”

“I’ve never been,” Aaron said. “I’ve been to both Paul Bunyans. In Brainerd he’s sitting down. He talks, but he’s not real. Have you been?”

“Perish the thought! I abhor giants. They’re so”—Clarence paused to think what charges might be brought against giants—“large.” He laughed delightedly at his own response, and Aaron laughed also. “Well, we mustn’t engage in too much frivolity, or they will hear us and become suspicious.”

He glanced at Aaron. “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we spy on them? I’m not as stealthy in this contraption as I would like to be, but you could easily tiptoe down the hallway, listen a bit, and report back. What do you say?”

Aaron nodded, pleased to be given so much responsibility.

“Splendid,” said Clarence, bringing his small, plump hands together in a celebratory clap. “I shall await your return with bated breath. Be sure to note all. And be cautious. You know what they do to spies.”

“What do they do?” Aaron whispered, but Clarence waved him out the door.

In the living room, his mother and Gloria sat side by side on the couch, a single afghan covering their knees. Aaron heard his mother say, “So, that’s what I told him. It was right after we got back from the vacation, and I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

Gloria said something, breathing the words toward his mother.

“Well,” his mother said, “he was angry, but I knew he would be. He said, ‘If that’s the game you want to play, fine. But I’ll take Aaron, and you’ll see what I do to him, the mess I’ll make. Just try me.’ ”

Gloria took two walnuts from the bowl and cupped them in her hands, pressing them against each other until one gave way. She extracted the meat and offered it to Aaron’s mother, who accepted the bits of flesh and sat holding them in her palm.

“Sometimes,” his mother said, “I can’t help but think it was my fault. That he wasn’t holding on properly because he was distracted by—” She began to cry, but Aaron was relieved that she did not make the low moans he heard coming from her bedroom at night. Gloria tucked the afghan more tightly around his mother’s legs.

“Well?” Clarence demanded as Aaron crept in and closed the door.

“They’re eating walnuts,” Aaron said.

“Where are they sitting?” Clarence asked. “How would you describe their body language?”

“They’re sitting on the couch,” Aaron said. He had never heard of body language.

“Together?” Clarence cackled, and Aaron nodded miserably.

“Talking?”

Aaron nodded again.

“About what?”

“About my father.”

“What about your father?” Clarence asked greedily.

“My father was going to take me,” he said. He looked up at Clarence. “My mother said they were arguing because he wanted me with him.”

Clarence sniffed. “Would you like to see the wasps now?” he asked, as though seeing the wasps had already been discussed.

Aaron knocked his shoe against one of Clarence’s wheels.

“Stop that god-awful kicking,” Clarence said, and Aaron turned away. “Fine, if you don’t want to see the wasps, then you shall not.”

“I do want to see the wasps,” Aaron said in a low voice.

“Well, you mustn’t be petulant, or I can assure you that the wasps will not want to see you. Now, slide open that door and see that my ramp is clear. Sister’s troublesome dogs are fond of sitting on it whilst gnawing bones.”

Aaron went over to the drab white drapes that covered one wall and managed to open them, revealing a sliding glass door. On the other side of it, a ramp sloped gently to the ground. It was covered with leaves and several well-chewed bones. Aaron walked down the ramp, kicking it clean, then back up to where Clarence waited, a pair of oversize sunglasses perched on his nose.

The wasps, it turned out, lodged in the school bus. “I’ve seen them only once,” Clarence explained as Aaron pushed him along a path beside the driveway. “Sister carried me inside.”

Aaron listened at the open door of the bus. “They’re at the back,” Clarence called. “Be sure not to rile them.”

Aaron climbed the steps and sat in the driver’s seat. The steering wheel was covered with cobwebs and desiccated insect husks. He pretended to drive, using both hands to flip out the sign that said STOP FOR CHILDREN. Mainly, he was thinking about what he had heard his mother telling Gloria.

“What are you doing in there?” Clarence asked fretfully, but instead of replying, Aaron walked to the back of the bus, where the wasp nest hung from the emergency door. He listened for the wasps again, but all he heard was Clarence calling to him from outside. He reached up and shook the nest, hard.

The wasps were on him instantly. As he ran back down the aisle of the bus, he felt small explosions of pain, first on his arms and legs and then across his entire body. He stumbled down the steps of the bus and fell to the ground.

“Sister,” Clarence called weakly. “Sister, come at once.”

The dogs came first. They circled Aaron, howling. When he opened his eyes next, his mother and Gloria were there. Gloria pulled the afghan from Clarence’s legs and began swatting Aaron with it. She stripped away his clothes, shaking out the sluggish wasps lodged in the folds of his shirt and stomping them into the ground with her boots.

“Vile creatures,” Clarence announced.

Aaron lay on the ground in his underwear, his body covered with red welts. This time when his mother cried, she did make the low moans.

“This will require poultices, Sister,” Clarence declared, the last thing Aaron heard before he passed out.

* * *

He opened his right eye. The left was swollen shut. His mother was there beside him, Gloria behind her, Clarence at his feet, head tipped back so that he seemed to be sighting Aaron along his tusks. Aaron sniffed, aware of an odor that was coming from him, a combination of grass and mustard. He did not like mustard because it reminded him of hotdogs.

“Do you like hotdogs?” he asked Clarence. His mother sniffled.

“Certainly not,” Clarence said. “I dislike hotdogs in all of their permutations, though I particularly despise the bratwurst.” Something about Clarence’s response, the way he said “permutations,” calmed Aaron, and he closed his good eye again. Soon, he heard his mother and Gloria stand and leave the room.

“Your mother was quite hysterical,” Clarence whispered. “She seemed to think you were hallucinating because you kept crying out that you were”—he paused dramatically—“the king of pain.”

Aaron did not remember calling out, nor how he had come to be on the sofa, but he knew he had never experienced pain like this, pain that was everywhere, burning and throbbing and itching. He fell back into a sweaty, listless sleep in which he dreamed that he was on a parade float, calling, “I’m the King of Pain” as he rolled down the street, waving to the people below. He could hear Gloria, Clarence, and his mother talking, their voices blending with his dream, their conversation punctuated by a clinking sound that he later realized was the repetition of cup meeting saucer but in his dream became the steady tapping of a pair of cumbersome tusks that collided with everything in their path. When he awoke, he studied Clarence, relieved to find him still in possession of his small, elegant tusks and not the monstrosities of his dream. Only then did he realize that the tusks in the dream had belonged not to Clarence but to him.

“Where are we?” he asked, looking around the small, sunny room.

“We’re at the Bjorklunds, Aaron,” his mother said. She glanced at Gloria, who prodded one of his poultices.

“I know that,” Aaron said. “I mean this room.”

“This is the sunroom,” Clarence announced grandly. “As you may know from your studies, the sun has tremendous curative powers.”

Gloria and his mother rose and gathered the cups. Once they had disappeared into the kitchen, Clarence wheeled closer. “You provoked them, didn’t you?” he said.

“Who?” Aaron asked. He sat up.

“The wasps,” Clarence said impatiently. “You must have provoked them.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Aaron said. In fact, he did know, but he did not want to talk, not even to Clarence, about the clarity he had felt as he reached toward the wasps intending to do just that—provoke.

“Do you like rabbits?” Clarence asked after a moment.

Aaron recalled the rabbit at the petting zoo at the first Paul Bunyan Park, the sleekness of its ears and the way it trembled when he held it. “Yes,” he said.

“Splendid,” Clarence shrieked. “Sister is preparing one of the little rascals for our supper.”

He did not look at Clarence because he knew that Clarence was waiting for him to respond, that Clarence was upset with him for refusing to discuss the wasps. Though his mother had said he was to rest, Aaron stood up. He felt weak, but he took a step and then another, keeping his hand on the couch. He noticed a pile of newspapers, stacked in a beam of sunlight. Atop it was a cat, gray with white-tipped ears.

“May I pet the cat?” Aaron asked.

“Indeed you may,” Clarence said. “Nothing gives me more pleasure than a child who has learned to use the English language properly, except for an adult who has done so. That, of course, is a good deal rarer.”

Aaron let go of the couch and took several slow steps toward the cat. Though it hurt to do so, he crouched beside it, wanting to appear less threatening. He whispered, “Hello, cat,” and then, more loudly, “Do you have a name?”

“Of course he has a name,” Clarence said. “His name is Aaron.”

Aaron turned to look at Clarence. “Is that really his name?”

“Do you take me for a liar?”

“Maybe you’re teasing me,” Aaron said.

“I can assure you that I tease, to use your word, with far greater sophistication. Really, Aaron, what would be the purpose of such simple-minded game playing?”

“I don’t know,” Aaron said. He did not understand exactly what he was being asked, but a word came to him and he said, “I guess it’s a coincidence.”

“A coincidence indeed,” Clarence agreed, looking in no way surprised at his use of such a word. “Sister named him.”

Aaron turned back to the cat and tapped gently on its paw. It stretched and opened its eyes. Except there were no eyes, just two empty sockets where the eyes should have been.

“Oh!” Aaron cried, tipping backward onto his buttocks.

“Did I forget to mention that our feline friend is eyeless?” Clarence crowed.

“What happened to his eyes?” Aaron asked, his voice shaking. The empty sockets seemed to be staring at him.

“Sister found him in the barn several years ago. The ants had made a picnic, as it were, of his eyeballs.” Clarence laughed. “His mother had moved the rest of the litter elsewhere. He was a tiny, starving thing when Sister found him, but she nursed him back to health, and that was that. She’s quite devoted to him.”

“Doesn’t he get lost?” Aaron asked.

“Lost?” Clarence said. “There’s no opportunity for him to get lost. He’s not allowed outdoors except when Sister takes him on a leash, and then he just sniffs the geese droppings and eats a bit of grass. Otherwise, this room is his world, and though it’s small, I imagine he feels quite safe here. You know, there’s something to be said for the security of the familiar, in all its confining glory.”

* * *

Aaron did not think he could fall asleep again, not with the eyeless cat nearby, but he returned to the couch and soon he was sleeping. He awakened to the smell of food cooking and the soft whistle of Clarence’s breathing.

“Clarence,” he said, sitting up, “will you ever get bigger?”

“Bigger?” said Clarence. “What sort of dwarf would I be if I were bigger?”

“I don’t know,” said Aaron.

“Are you familiar with the expression ‘I’ve seen bigger dwarves’?”

“No,” said Aaron.

“Well, it’s a first-rate expression. You may be young for irony now, but I’ve no doubt you’ll grow into it nicely, so it’s an expression worth remembering. I daresay it will provide you with something on which to ruminate when you’re older and experiencing the proverbial rainy day. There are sure to be many in that hamlet of yours. What is it called? Mortonville?” He spoke as if Mortonville were a bitter herb he had been forced to sample.

“Have you been to Mortonville?” Aaron asked. He tried to picture Clarence there, peering through the plate-glass windows of Bildt Hardware, rolling past the Trout Café.

“Certainly not,” said Clarence. “Were I able to travel and inclined to do so, I can assure you that it is not to Mortonville I would go.” He added with an air of finality, “Indeed not.”

Neither did Aaron want to think of Clarence in Mortonville, where he imagined people staring, then looking away, putting their hands over their mouths to conceal their laughter each time he spoke because they would not be able to see Clarence as the author of humor, only as its object. In Mortonville, Clarence would not be Clarence at all.

“Of course, I cannot take credit for the expression,” Clarence went on. “It was submitted to me by a pen pal from Iowa.”

“What are pen pals?” Aaron asked.

“Pen pals are people with whom I correspond via the postal service.”

“You write letters?” Aaron said, by way of confirming his understanding.

“That is precisely what we do. I’ve numerous pen pals, almost all little people. It is thanks to them that I have managed to compile my archives.”

“And all of these people — the pen pals — are they your friends?” Aaron asked.

“Friends?” Clarence said. “If pressed to do so, I would place most of them firmly in the category of acquaintances.”

“Pal means friend,” Aaron pointed out.

“They are most certainly not pals, for that is a word I despise. In fact, thanks to you, young Aaron, I shall refrain from using the term pen pals ever again. Dreadful,” Clarence muttered, raking his tongue loudly against his teeth.

“What will you call them?” Aaron asked.

Clarence thought for a moment. “I shall refer to them as my correspondents.”

“What do you and your correspondents write about?”

“Everything. I am compiling what I hope will be the definitive collection of artifacts and documents related to dwarves in our society. This is the archive of which Sister spoke earlier. I dare say it shall be my life’s work. Already I’ve been at it — informally, of course — for most of my adulthood, though my fascination truly began in adolescence. As a boy, you see, I was quite convinced I was an anomaly, and though my parents assured me that there were others of my stature — even shorter — I refused to believe it. I measured myself daily and took to hiding in places too small for anyone else in my family to fit. The big pot in which my mother melted lard and the valise that my grandfather carried when he came to live with us were my favorites. Finally, when I was fourteen, my parents resorted to desperate measures to prove me wrong.”

“What did they do?” Aaron asked.

“They hired a dwarf. They ran advertisements in several newspapers, and a man replied, an older gentleman, unrelentingly tedious. He arrived on a Friday dressed in what appeared to be a boy’s church suit and departed after dinner on Sunday. While I normally despise Sundays, I was never so relieved to see Sunday arrive and that fellow depart.”

“What was his name?” Aaron asked.

“Otto. He was a clerk in a grocery store in Winnipeg and had been for thirty-some years. The first night he described for us, in detail, the special stool he’d had fashioned so that he could reach the register. At meal times, as we discussed various trivial matters, he would shout out the prices of the food we were consuming—‘potatoes this or that much a pound’—his finger punching the air frantically. He was ringing up the meal, you see. As my sisters cleared the table the second night, I turned to him and asked, ‘Well, Otto, what is our grand total this evening?’ I was teasing, but his index finger shot out, tapped an imaginary total key, and he pulled himself up in his chair to better make out the figure. Of course, we leaned forward to hear it, at which point the silly man became quite flustered and tucked his hands beneath his buttocks. We laughed, both to ease the moment and because it was funny. He tried to be good-natured, but his job was really all he had and he wasn’t clever enough to be self-deprecating, so I think the visit upset him greatly.”

“Did he cry?” Aaron asked.

“He may have, though not in our presence.”

“What happened to Otto?” Aaron asked.

“Nothing happened to him. He went back to his stool at the grocery store in Winnipeg. I’ve received archival scraps from him over the years, nothing significant.”

“I wish I had correspondents,” Aaron said. “It must be wonderful.”

“It can be,” Clarence agreed. “Take Olga, my correspondent in Iowa. It was she who contributed the ‘bigger dwarves’ expression I mentioned earlier, after learning of my archives from Otto. That was nearly a decade ago. She told me nothing of herself in that first letter. Olga requires coaxing. Later she explained that she had been given Otto’s address by a well-intentioned cousin of her husband who knew Otto from the store.” Clarence coughed and spat delicately into a large handkerchief, inspected the contents, and folded the handkerchief around them. “ ‘He’s of your ilk,’ the cousin said when she presented Olga with Otto’s address. Isn’t that a delightful introduction?” He laughed. Aaron laughed also because he liked Clarence’s laugh, but he thought the word ilk sounded awful.

“The truth,” Clarence continued, his voice becoming more nasal, “is that Olga wrote to Otto because she was lonely, but they were not of the same ilk, not at all. I received my first letter from her on June sixth, 1962. It was, as I have already noted, a pithy epistle. I wrote back, thanking her for her fine contribution to the archives, and over the years we have become well acquainted.” He cleared his throat again. “In fact, Olga’s is a sad tale. Have you any interest in hearing it?”

“I like sad tales,” said Aaron. “In school we read only happy ones. My mother says I’m too young to be interested in tales of woe. That’s what she calls them.”

“Yes, I suppose you are young, though I have found that there is no better way to forget your own tales of woe than by listening to those of others.”

Clarence’s fingers had crept out from beneath the afghan. They were plump, like breakfast sausages, and Aaron found himself thinking pigs in a blanket, which he had ordered once in a restaurant based solely on the name. He remembered how happy he had been when his breakfast arrived and he discovered that pigs in a blanket were sausages, the beauty of their name matching their tastiness.

“You seem distracted,” Clarence said querulously. “Perhaps we should speak of something other than Olga’s sad story?” A rattling began in his throat, which he tried to clear, but the phlegm seemed to build. “You’ll forgive me for making such a racket,” he gasped. “It has been a difficult week.” He stared straight ahead, his sausage fingers clutching the afghan.

“I believe there has been a settling,” he announced finally. “Sister and I have a little joke that we engage in at such times. She tells me I am sounding phlegmish, and I reply, ‘I should say closer to Dutch, Sister.’ It never fails to amuse her. I must admit I’ve come to find the joke tiresome, but it would disappoint her if I were to stop.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand the joke,” Aaron said.

“What is there to understand?” Clarence said. “Surely you’ve heard of Flanders?”

“No,” said Aaron.

“What grade are you in?”

“I’m starting second grade.”

“Second grade?” Clarence cried. “Second grade and you are unfamiliar with Flanders? I am quite sure that by the time I began second grade I was well versed in European geography, inclusive of its subtleties.”

Aaron said nothing. He did not understand how this place called Flanders had even entered the discussion. “What about Olga and the tale of woe?” he asked.

“We shall speak no more of Olga,” said Clarence severely, then, less severely, “Come. Supper awaits us. You shall be my valet.”

11

Aaron studied the meat on his plate. He had thought that rabbit would be easy to recognize, but without the telltale ears, this was not the case.

“Sister constructed this table,” Clarence announced. “She completed it in a single afternoon.”

“Gloria, you made this table?” said Aaron’s mother.

It was higher than other tables. Aaron had to reach upward for his food.

“For Clary’s wheelchair,” Gloria said. She pulled her head into her hunched shoulders in an unflattering, turtlelike way. “I’ve always been pretty inept with my hands.”

“Inept,” Clarence squealed, and Gloria hunched her shoulders even more.

For several minutes they ate in silence, Gloria occasionally reaching over to Clarence’s plate in order to cut his meat into even smaller pieces or to add green beans to his already large pile. When she plopped a pat of butter onto his potato, he threw down his cutlery. “Sister,” he hissed, “we have agreed, numerous times, that you will not touch my plate unless I ask for your assistance. I have made no such request, as our guests can surely confirm.” He pinched the butter between his fingers and flung it back at her.

Aaron’s mother turned quickly to Aaron. “Gloria has invited us to spend the night,” she said, “since it might not be wise for you to travel after your wasp ordeal.”

Aaron nodded and reached up for his milk. The thought of spending more time with Clarence made him happy, but he did not know how to verbalize his pleasure. They all continued to nibble at the meat that might or might not be rabbit until Clarence sniffed the air as one would a past-due carton of milk and announced, “When I was a bit older than young Aaron, I had a schoolmaster who suffered from an abnormal fear of dwarves. Do you remember, Sister?”

“Mr. Nordstrum,” she said. “There’d been some scandal at his previous school.”

“Ah, yes, Nordstrum,” said Clarence. “He was let go because he’d taken to attaching love notes when he returned homework.”

“How do you know such things, Clary?” Gloria asked.

“Little pitchers have big ears,” he responded with a giggle. “It’s an expression,” he added when he saw Aaron studying his ears. “And I know such things, Sister, because I make it my business to know. He was a ridiculous little man, writing love notes to fifteen-year-old girls who no doubt laughed behind his tonsured little head. He had a penchant for robust farm girls and had become inspired by a particular young Heidi, whom he liked to imagine perched atop a milking stool with her plump hands patiently coaxing milk out of one stubborn udder after another.”

“Clary, our guests,” Gloria said, inclining her head toward Aaron.

“I am merely quoting from his letters, loosely of course.” He addressed Aaron directly now, as though that was what Gloria had intended. “I doubt that our beloved schoolmaster was capable of much eloquence. Eventually, his secret came out.” He looked back at his sister. “As secrets always do.”

“Clary, can we please have a nice evening?” Gloria said. “We so rarely have guests.”

“You mean an evening where nobody says anything interesting and certainly not anything they really mean? Tell me, Sister. What fun is a nice evening?” He turned to Aaron’s mother. “Dolores, were you frightened when you first set eyes on me?”

“Of course not,” said Aaron’s mother, answering quickly, as she did when she was nervous.

“Ah, splendid.” Clarence picked up his fork and dangled it from his fat fingers.

“Clary, stop it,” Gloria said. “Why do you insist on this?” She reached over and began sawing at his meat again.

“What is it that I am insisting on? I am merely chatting with our guest, who has confirmed that she was pleased to meet me.” As he spoke, he brought his fork down on the back of Gloria’s hand, applying pressure. “In fact, I am delighted to hear it since most people, upon making my acquaintance, can think only about what a queer little creature I am — though I prefer that to being mistaken for a child.” He looked down at Gloria’s hand, trapped beneath his fork. “As you can see, Sister, I am quite capable of managing cutlery.”

“I’m sorry, Clary,” said Gloria.

“I know you are, Sister.” Clarence lifted his fork, and Gloria’s hand fluttered up. He smacked his lips. “The hare was superb,” he said.

* * *

At home, Aaron’s nightly chore was to dry the supper dishes, so when his mother called to him from Gloria’s kitchen, he rose — though he would have preferred to stay with Clarence — and stood, a dishtowel in hand, between his mother and Gloria. His mother washed, and Gloria received the dried dishes from him, inspecting each before she put it away.

“How are you feeling then?” Gloria asked.

“Fine,” he said.

“Gloria, show Aaron your trick,” his mother said. She stopped washing, halting the whole chain of labor. When she turned, he could see the strain of the visit on her face.

“Ah, the trick,” said Gloria. She took two walnuts from her overalls pocket and held them out, one in each palm, for him to see before bringing her hands together, fingers laced as if in prayer. Her muscles bulged and Aaron heard the crack of a nut bursting open. His mother cheered, and Gloria opened her hand — the intact walnut at its center, its shell slick with perspiration — and offered him the meat of the other.

“I don’t feel good,” he told his mother. He handed her the dishtowel.

Gloria and his mother took him into the sunroom, where he would sleep that night. His mother said she would be back in ten minutes to tuck him in, but he could hear the two of them talking in the dining room and knew they had forgotten about his bedtime. He looked for the cat. The thought of sleeping with its hollow sockets staring at him seemed unbearable. He was bent down, searching beneath the couch, when he heard Clarence roll in behind him. “I imagine you’re looking for Aaron,” said Clarence. “Sister has taken him to her quarters for the evening.” Aaron got up from the floor. “I’ve come to see whether you need anything, and I’ve brought you these.” He indicated the neatly folded pajamas on his lap. They were covered with Santas and reindeer. “Yet another of Sister’s poorly conceived though well-intentioned gifts.”

“Thank you,” Aaron said. He took the pajamas. “What happened to the teacher who was afraid of you?” he asked.

“Ah, Nordstrum has caught your interest,” said Clarence. “I am not surprised to learn that classroom injustice interests you. In fact, I would be happy to finish the story, particularly since justice prevails, but first you must take those wretched pajamas down the hallway to the bathroom and get yourself ready for bed. Agreed?”

“Yes,” said Aaron. He ran down the hallway, changed into the pajamas, folded his clothes, urinated, rinsed his mouth because he had no toothbrush, and returned.

“You look ridiculous,” Clarence said as Aaron stood before him in the Santa pajamas. “But there’s nothing to be done about it. Climb beneath the covers at least, so I don’t have to look at you.”

Aaron did, and Clarence began his story immediately. “This Nordstrum was bothered by my presence in his classroom to the extent that he wished to have me removed from it altogether. The principal — who was not a bad man, merely limited in his sensibilities — did not grant his request, could not, for ours was a tiny school. Nordstrum was in charge of not just my fourth-grade class but fifth and sixth as well, which meant that he had three years of my unsettling presence to look forward to.

“Instead, the principal summoned me to his office, and perhaps because he too found me freakish, he spoke with candor. Mr. Nordstrum’s fear had nothing to do with me personally, he said. It was caused solely by my appearance. He seemed unaware that his assessment contradicted itself. In closing, he noted that Nordstrum would adjust to my oddness, just as everyone else had managed to do. What he asked of me was patience. Though I’ve outgrown it admirably, patience was one of my virtues as a boy, for hadn’t I waited, day after day, year after year, to grow? Of course, a man like Nordstrum never gets over his fear because it’s nothing but a stand-in for prejudice. Nonetheless, justice was served.” He paused and patted his chest. “By me. From that day onward, I made a point to be always in front of Nordstrum. I sat in the front row so that when he glanced up, I was the first thing he saw. I arrived early for school and stayed late, and when we went outside for recess, I trotted behind him like a shadow so that when he turned, I—”

“You could walk?” Aaron interrupted.

“Of course I could walk,” Clarence said. “I walked to school, several miles each way, though in winter my sisters — Gloria, whom you know, and Frances, who is a year older than Gloria — took turns pulling me on a sled.”

“Were you afraid of snow?” Aaron asked.

“Quite the opposite. Sometimes my father would hoist me on top of a big bank of snow and I would run across it, liberated by the realization that no one was light enough to follow me.”

“But now you have to be in a wheelchair?” Aaron asked.

“I was an active child, and when it became clear that I had weak bones, my parents began to restrict my activities. They lacked money for medical bills and did not like to see me suffer. Moreover, my mother felt secretly responsible for my overall condition because of an incident that occurred in my infancy, involving my grandfather, her father, who had come to stay with us around the time I was born. I don’t remember him well — he died when I was still young — but I have been told that he liked to drink. Over the years, he lost everything, all the land he had farmed with decreasing success. He had come from Sweden as a child with his parents and six siblings, but only he and his parents survived the journey. Later, everyone marveled that it was this weak, easily crushed man who had had the stamina, or simply the luck, to remain alive as his siblings fell like flies.

“After he had sold off all his land in bits, he was shuffled around until he came here to be with his youngest daughter. By then he had become like a child again. My mother said that he would chase my sisters around the house making animal noises, quacking like a duck for hours until even my sisters, who were two and three at the time, begged my mother to make him stop. Of course, my mother allowed no alcohol in the house, so at night, while everyone slept, he would sit in his room at the window, seized by tremors and longing, before rising to pace the house. The years of drinking had affected his motor skills, so he clomped along noisily, bumping into things.

“One night, he passed by my sisters’ room, where I slept in a clothes basket. Later, he explained that he had heard me crying and, wanting to be useful, had gone in and lifted me from the basket, thinking he would rock me back to sleep. My parents awoke to the sound of my howling outside their window and jumped from their bed to look. They couldn’t see me there on the ground because it was dark, but they could hear me. My mother said that my father pried open the window and climbed right out to retrieve me. They found my grandfather asleep upstairs, still leaning on the sill. He remembered nothing more than sitting down to rock me.”

“What happened to him?” Aaron asked.

“He killed himself several years later,” Clarence said matter-of-factly. “As I began to grow — or rather, as I began not to grow — he became despondent. Though he had become childlike in most ways, it seemed that he still possessed an adult capacity for self-recrimination. Often he was up at three or four a.m., before my father rose to attend to chores even, and I would occasionally join him for breakfast. He always made oatmeal, and we rarely spoke, though he would giggle over something silly — a chair scraping across the floor that sounded like gas being passed. When we were finished, the bowls and spoons rinsed, he would remove the yardstick from the old butter churn and gesture for me to stand. I would, and he would press it to my back, hold his hand level across my head, and mark a spot on the stick with his finger. He would study that spot, muttering to himself, and then return the yardstick to the churn and go outside.”

* * *

“I have a bully,” Aaron announced to Clarence after breakfast the next morning. Gloria had served eggs, and their runniness added to the nauseated state in which he’d awakened, the result of having slept poorly. The night before, his mother had not returned to tuck him in, but even after Clarence shut off the sunroom light and the house became still, he’d been unable to sleep, his mind looping back through all the stories that Clarence had told him. It was pleasant, like watching reruns of his favorite television shows, except he realized that he had told Clarence nothing of himself in return, nothing to keep him alive in Clarence’s memory the way that the stories about the schoolmaster who hated Clarence and the grandfather who dropped him out the window would keep Clarence alive in his. He resolved to tell Clarence the story of his bully the next morning, and only then had he drifted off to sleep.

“Of course you have a bully,” Clarence replied. “Men like us always have bullies. You must think of it as a badge of honor. In fact, I consider it one of my requirements for friendship. I have little interest in the unbullied masses.”

Aaron looked down, scuffing the toe of his shoe along the ground in pleasure.

“Does your bully possess a name?” Clarence asked.

“Yes,” said Aaron. “Her name is Roberta.”

“Ah, a female bully. I have always found female bullies relentless.”

“What does relentless mean?” Aaron asked, adding, “I know it’s an adjective.” He had recently learned about the parts of speech and appreciated adjectives most of all because they were not essential like nouns and verbs.

“It means that quite often there is no dissuading them. Boys, you see, tend to bully for the sheer joy of it and are, therefore, indiscriminate. They are motivated by the pleasure of bringing pain and welcome any opportunity to do so, provided it can be achieved with ease.” Clarence paused. Aaron nodded to indicate his interest in Clarence’s commentary, even if he did not fully understand it. “The female bully, on the other hand, is loyal. It is you she is after, and she will not be distracted by substitutes.”

The bullying had begun in the spring, when the weather turned suddenly and unbearably warm and Aaron and his classmates twitched in their seats and sighed at Mrs. Lindskoog’s demands upon them. For weeks they sat, brains dormant, the air rotten with a smell like turning milk, which was the odor of their bodies ripening in the closeness of the room. Then, on the last Thursday of April, a day on which the superintendent announced over the intercom that the temperature had reached ninety-six degrees, a girl named Roberta Klimek sauntered past Aaron’s desk on her way to the pencil sharpener and delivered a single blow to his right arm. She had not spoken — in warning or explanation — and nobody else seemed to have noticed the attack, the first of what was to become a daily ritual. Soon, both of his arms were covered with bruises, dark like thunderclouds, and he began wearing long sleeves to conceal them, despite the heat. Still, it intrigued him to think of his body creating and hosting such rich, deep colors, and as he got ready for bed he took to standing with his shirt off before the bathroom mirror, admiring the contrast of blues and purples and yellows against his pale skin. It was in this pose that his mother found him one night. She opened the bathroom door, unaware that he was inside, and as she backed out, the flash of color caught her eye.

“Where did those bruises come from?” she asked quietly. His father’s anger had been loud, drowning out everything else. It was only after his death that Aaron realized anger came in quiet forms as well.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“It doesn’t look like nothing.”

“It’s a game,” he said, and having thus committed himself to mendacity, he added, “They don’t even hurt.”

“A game?” she said. “Who exactly do you play this game with?”

“Just some kids.”

“Brush your teeth,” she said at last.

It was working in pairs that had first brought him to the attention of Roberta Klimek, after he had been paired not with her but with Kimberly, the pug-nosed girl who had been a favorite of Miss Meeks. When Kimberly heard her name coupled with Aaron’s, she blurted out, “Can’t I work with somebody else?”

“You can, but you may not,” Mrs. Lindskoog answered sternly, as if grammatical impropriety were the issue. She believed in the benefits of working in pairs, which Aaron dreaded even more than group work, for in groups he could keep quiet and do a disproportionate share of the work while in pairs there was no room for silent diligence.

He and Kimberly pushed their desks together and turned their attention to reading about another pair, Dick and Jane, who were a steady and tedious presence in their readers. After several minutes of boredom, Kimberly announced, “You know that nobody likes you.”

“I know,” he said.

“Miss Meeks didn’t like you,” she tried again.

“I know,” he agreed.

The two of them sat then, books open, neither making further attempts to read aloud, but Kimberly was not content to while away their reading period in a state of benign idleness. She gazed around the room for inspiration, and her eyes fell on Roberta Klimek. “You love Roberta,” she announced with such authority that the other children began to giggle.

Aaron stared down at his book, shocked by Kimberly’s casual invocation of the word love, then peeked over at Roberta Klimek, whose hands lay on top of her reader, twitching like fish too long out of water. As Kimberly continued her taunting, Aaron watched those hands draw together into fists.

Roberta Klimek was large for her age with long, straight hair and a blotchy complexion, a shy girl who carried out her attacks covertly, for she did not crave the fanfare that often marked bullying as a public event, a factor that he soon realized was not in his favor. He began to study her in the same way that she tormented him — furtively and with persistence. He learned that, unlike his other classmates, who settled into one or two “good” subjects and tolerated the rest, Roberta Klimek had the distinction of being poor at everything. She remained steadfastly unable to alphabetize, seemed not even to see the relationship between this skill and the alphabet itself, that series of letters that she had spent kindergarten, and now first grade, struggling to keep in order.

Finally, on a sweltering day in May, Aaron approached Roberta Klimek on the playground, where she stood by the monkey bars, alone like him. “Excuse me,” he said, the first words he had ever spoken to this girl whose fists he knew intimately, wanting to establish himself as a polite boy, a boy who said “excuse me” even to his tormentors, but as Roberta Klimek leaped on him and began to pound him with her fists, he knew that this trait was what flamed her hatred.

His mother was summoned to a meeting attended by the principal, Mrs. Lindskoog, the school nurse, Aaron, Roberta Klimek, and her father, who sat beside his daughter with similarly clenched fists and explained that she was in training. She planned to become a boxer, and he supported her dream. That was the word he used—dream—and Aaron would always remember how everyone looked down at the floor at the very sound of it.

“What can I do?” Aaron asked Clarence as he finished telling the story.

“I’ve never had much success thwarting bullies,” Clarence told him, “though if it’s any consolation, bullies, in my experience, eventually tire of you and move on.”

“It’s time to go,” said Aaron’s mother from the doorway of the sunroom. “I don’t like driving on gravel roads after dark.” It was not yet noon, so her comment made no sense, but Aaron did not say so. “Five minutes,” she said and left.

“Please, Clarence,” he said. “Tell me about Olga’s tale of woe before we go.”

“Impossible,” said Clarence. “Stories should never be told quickly. One must always leave time for creative embellishment and digression, or what are we left with?” He looked at Aaron, who shrugged. “The dreary facts. That’s what,” said Clarence. “And I can assure you that Olga deserves much more than the dreary facts.”

Though Aaron would not grasp until he was much older that Clarence had been in love with Olga, he could see that Clarence would not be convinced to tell the story. Already his mother was yelling, “Right now, Aaron” from the other room, and so he took the handles of Clarence’s wheelchair one last time and pushed him down the hallway and onto the porch, where the four of them regarded one another awkwardly, as people often do when it is time to say good-bye.

“Well,” said his mother as they pulled out of the driveway, one of Gloria’s doilies on the seat between them. “That’s finally over.”

* * *

He had always liked sleeping in cars, waking up in a different place. It was the closest he came to understanding the passage of time. He shut his eyes, listening to the pleasant sound of gravel rattling beneath the car. “What would you think if we moved?” his mother said.

Aaron opened his eyes.

“We already moved,” he said.

“I mean into town. I’m thinking about buying the Trout Café. I’ve already talked to Frank, and he’s interested. We would live there.”

Aaron tried to imagine it: he and his mother stretching out in the booths to sleep each night, awakening in them each morning, his mother going into the bathroom marked Ladies while he used the one for Men. “Do people live in cafés?” he asked.

“We’ll live over it,” his mother said. “You’ll help me in the kitchen, washing dishes and chopping things. It’ll be a lot of work, you know, so I’ll need you.” It was only then that he understood what his mother meant. They were going to run the café the way that Frank did, frying hamburgers for people and bringing them ketchup and pie.

“We don’t know how to live in a café,” he said.

“We’ll learn,” his mother said. “Sometimes you’re such a scaredy cat.” She laughed, but he heard his father’s voice saying “chickenshit.” “I can cook,” she said. “Remember what I told you yesterday, about when I worked for the Goulds.”

Only later, years later, did he understand that she had needed him to say the things she did not yet believe: that she could run a café and cook for people and be happy.

“What will Frank do?” he asked instead.

“Frank will retire. He’ll go fishing whenever he wants and sit in his garden. Maybe he’ll drop by for a cup of coffee sometimes. First, though, he’ll teach us everything we need to know.”

“Like about the cash register?” Aaron asked.

“Well, yes, the cash register, for one thing. And we’ll need to learn how to manage in such a large kitchen. I’ve got some ideas of my own also.”

She sounded happy when she said this, happy to have her own ideas.

“What kind of ideas?” he asked.

“Oh, just some ideas about how to fix things. Frank’s getting old, and when people get old, they shouldn’t have to think about those things anymore. But we’re not old, are we?” she asked brightly. “For starters, I’d like to change the menu a little.”

“Won’t Frank feel bad if we change the menu?”

“Why would he feel bad, silly?” she said. “It will be our café. Besides, people expect change. They look forward to it.”

He thought about Frank sitting at home in his garden, wondering what had been wrong with his menu. He tried to feel excited because his mother was, but he could not. He did not believe that people looked forward to change.