Our Souls at Night

8

I was raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, she said. We lived out on the northeast side of town. We had a nice two-story clapboard house. My father was a businessman and did well and my mother was a very good housekeeper and a good cook. It was a middle-class sort of neighborhood, a working-class neighborhood. I had one sister. We didn’t get along. She was more active and more outgoing, with a kind of gregarious nature that I didn’t have. I was quiet, bookish. After high school I went to the university and lived at home and took the bus downtown to my classes. I started off studying French but swZeid his handitched to elementary school education.

Then I met Carl in my sophomore year and we started dating and by the time I turned twenty I was pregnant.

Were you scared?

Not of the baby. No. Not of having one. But I didn’t know how we would manage. Carl still had a year and a half to get his degree. On Christmas Day he joined me at my parents’ house — he lived in Omaha — and together we both told my parents after dinner, all of us sitting in the living room. My mother just started crying. My father was angry. I thought you knew better. He stared at Carl. What in hell’s wrong with you. Nothing’s wrong with him, I said. It just happened. Well it didn’t by God just happen. He made it happen. There were two of us involved, Daddy. Well my God, he said.

We got married in January and moved into a tiny dark apartment in downtown Lincoln and I got a temporary job clerking in a department store and we waited. The baby came one night in May. They wouldn’t let Carl in the room. Then we took the baby home and were happy and very poor.

Didn’t your parents help you?

Not much. Carl didn’t want their help. Well, I didn’t either.

That was your daughter, then. I didn’t think she was that old.

Yes, that was Connie.

I only remember her vaguely. I know how she died.

Yes. Addie stopped talking and moved in the bed. I’ll talk about that some other time. I’ll just tell you now that when Carl graduated we both wanted to come to Colorado. We’d gone to Estes Park once for a short vacation and liked the mountains and needed to get out of Lincoln and away from everything. And start up somewhere new. Carl got a job selling insurance in Longmont and we lived there for a couple of years, then old Mr. Gorland here in Holt decided to retire and so we borrowed money and moved here and Carl took over his insurance office and his clients. And we’ve been here ever since. That was in 1970.

How was it that you got pregnant?

What do you mean? How does anybody get pregnant?

Well, my memory is we were all pretty careful and nervous back then.

But we were young too. Carl and I were in love. It’s the old story. It was all new and exciting.

It must have been.

She let go of his hand and moved farther away and lay straight in bed. He turned and looked at her in the dim light.

Why are you acting like this? she said. What’s the matter?

I don’t know.

Are you asking about the circumstances?

I guess.

About the sex?

I’m being more stupid than usual. I just feel sort of jealous and I don’t know what.

Out in the country on a dirt road in the back seat in the dark. Is that what you want to know?

I’d appreciate it if you would just call me a goddamn son of a bitch, Louis said. A man too foolish for words.note { font-size:0.9em; text-align: left; padding-left:2 %; text-plop

All right. You’re a foolish son of a bitch.

Thank you, he said.

You’re welcome. But you could ruin this. You know that. Is there anything else?

Did your parents ever get over it?

It turned out they >