After the Parade (37 page)

Aaron did not reply. All around them people were writing essays, eating sandwiches, and talking loudly into their cell phones even though the café had a policy. Bill took an envelope from his coat pocket and set it beside Aaron's beer. It was small, like the envelopes his mother had put Mr. Rehnquist's rent checks in. Aaron recalled how she had placed the envelopes under Mr. Rehnquist's coffee cup instead of handing them to him directly.

“There was nothing in public records,” Bill went on. “No tax documents or DMV trail. She doesn't vote or own property. I found a tax bill from 1983, unpaid. That was it. It was like she left that night and ceased to exist.”

The envelope remained on the table. Bill finished his second beer, his face, which was always florid, becoming even more so. Three days later, on Monday morning, Aaron would arrive at school, where Marla would be waiting with poorly concealed excitement to announce that Bill was dead, that as he sat in his car Saturday night, conducting surveillance on a man who was cheating on his wife, he had suffered a massive stroke, his body eventually discovered by the very man whom he had been following, who would in this way learn that he was the focus of an investigation. “Can you believe it?” Marla would say, referring not to the fact that Bill was dead but to this strange final twist. Aaron would be one of five people at the funeral, and after the service, he would go home and open the envelope Bill had given him one week earlier, the envelope that currently sat, untouched, beside his beer.

Aaron pointed at Bill's empty glass. “Another?”

Bill nodded and pushed his glass toward Aaron, and Aaron got up and stood in line, ordered Bill's third beer, and brought it back to the table.

“I found the Gronseth guy easy enough through public records,” Bill said, “so I called him. Said he hadn't heard from her in years, but he was pretty sure he knew where she was. He's a chatty guy.”

They were both drinking fast. When you were drinking, you didn't need to talk. “Did you speak with her?” Aaron asked at last.

“No,” Bill said. “That's not my business. I called and pretended to be working for the census bureau, just confirmed that she lived there.” He reached over and tapped the envelope. “It's all here,” he said. “Telephone numbers and addresses. I know you think you don't want it, but it's here. You can decide what to do with it.”

“Okay,” Aaron said. “Can I buy you another? Or maybe something to eat?”

Bill's glass was still half full, and Aaron could not imagine him eating beetloaf or quinoa fried rice. Bill looked at his watch and stood up. “I've got a guy I'm keeping an eye on. His wife's suspicious. He gets off work in a few, so I better get going.”

“Bill?” Aaron called after him. Bill turned. “Thank you.”

Bill nodded. “See you Monday.”

“See you Monday,” Aaron agreed, because there was no reason to think that he would not, and he picked up the envelope and put it in his pocket.

T
he grass around the bus was high, obscuring the wheels and even the black lettering on the side that announced the name of a school whose students the bus had once shuttled. Aaron supposed the school no longer existed, that it had been consolidated like those in so many small towns. He wondered whether there were still wasps living inside the bus but thought that Gloria had probably disposed of them after the attack, the way people put down dogs that were biters. He parked the car, an airport rental, got out, and slammed the door loudly, but no one came from the house to greet him. He shooed away three dogs that barked at him halfheartedly, climbed the porch steps, and knocked. After several minutes—during which he heard nothing from inside—the door opened.

It was his mother. She looked old, not simply
older,
for of course she was older, but old. It was not just one thing—wrinkles or jowls or bad teeth—but all of them combined, years of ignoring dentists and hairdressers and doctors, of ignoring the expectations of the world. During the three-hour drive from the Twin Cities, he had worried about numerous things, including how they would greet each other, so he was relieved when she said, “Hello, Aaron,” stepped back, and motioned him inside.

The doilies were gone, but otherwise the room was as he remembered it. His mother sat down on the couch, leaning back into it. She did not fill the silence with small talk, did not ask about his drive up from the Cities, whether he had eaten lunch along the way or gotten
lost or seen anything of interest. He was thankful for this. Of all the scenarios he had imagined, the one he dreaded most was the one in which his mother spoke to him with casual familiarity.

“What about Clarence?” he asked finally.

His mother laughed. “Clary? He's dead. He's been gone for a good while now.”

He was not surprised to hear Clarence was dead. He had assumed he would be. “When did he die?” he asked. “How?” He did not ask his mother why she had laughed.

“You were like this as a boy,” his mother said. “So serious. Always asking questions. You never had any friends because everyone was afraid of you.”

“Afraid of
me
?” he said. It was he who had always been afraid: of his father and then of his father's death, the memory of his father somersaulting through the air and the watermelonish thwack of his head; of his mother's illness and the constant sound of her crying; of Miss Meeks and the other children; of being left alone. He had spent his adult life dismantling these fears, but he did not say any of this to his mother. She did not deserve to know who he was, who he had become. She had given up that right.

Gloria came in and rushed toward him, chattering nervously, asking the questions about his trip that his mother had not. It was not how he remembered her. In fact, everything about her seemed different. Usually one confronted the past and it shrank down to size, but when Gloria held out her hand to shake his, it was the size of a man's, her grip almost painful. Of course, she had been strong back then also. He recalled the way she had cracked walnuts open with her hands and then handed the flesh to his mother, shyly, while his mother talked about his father and cried. “Someday, you'll enjoy irony,” Clarence had predicted. It was true. He had grown into a man who saw the world in terms of irony and symbol, who looked at these two women before him and thought of walnuts being squeezed together.

“I'm sorry to hear about Clarence,” he said.

Gloria nodded. “He lived longer than the doctors ever thought he would,” she said. “He fell out a window, you know.”

“That's how he died?” Aaron said. He pictured Clarence tumbling through the air as his father had.

“Oh, no. I mean when he was a baby. Our grandfather lived with us. He used to pick Clary up and talk to him when he cried late at night, and sometimes he'd hold him out the window so the rest of us wouldn't be bothered by his fussing. But one night he dropped Clary. He was sure the fall was what made Clary little.”

“Clarence told me that story,” Aaron said. “After the wasps attacked me. Remember?”

Gloria nodded. “I made mustard compresses.”

He felt foolish, for of course she remembered. She remembered everything connected to his mother. He saw that now. He had not seen it as a boy, but Clarence had, and so had his mother. It was why she had come here.
Sad Café Love,
he thought. It was better to be the
loved
than the
lover,
if better meant easier, safer.

“You know, Clary hated nearly everyone, but especially children,” Gloria said. “I always thought it had to do with their size, but after you left that day, he told me he thought you might grow up to be ‘more bearable' than most folks.”

She laughed and Aaron found himself joining her. His mother did not laugh. Gloria was the one who had cracked open.

*  *  *

His original plan had been to show up unannounced. He imagined something useful coming out of the surprise, but he had changed his mind when he arrived in the Twin Cities the night before, once he was back in Minnesota and could feel how easily he might lose his nerve, how he might drive back and forth past Gloria's farm for an entire afternoon without ever pulling in. He needed something that would bind him to action, something beyond his own weakening resolve, so he took out the telephone number Bill had given him and dialed it from his hotel near the airport.

Gloria had answered. “Yut,” she said, and he said, “This is—” and she said, “Aaron,” as though she had been sitting there by the telephone waiting for him to call.

“Yes,” he said. “This is Aaron,” and then, not knowing what to say next, he added, “Her son,” using the pronoun even though they had not yet mentioned his mother because his mother was all they had between them.

“I'll put her on,” Gloria said. Her breathing was off, wheezy.

“No,” he said. “Just let her know I'm coming.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I'll be there tomorrow.”

“All right, then,” Gloria said. She did not say that his mother would be happy to see him or that they looked forward to his arrival. He appreciated the lack of pleasantries.

The hotel was not in an area conducive to walking. This he had learned during check-in, when he asked the woman at the front desk—her nametag said
IRENE
—what restaurants were in walking distance. She looked at him as though he were asking about strip clubs or how to obtain a sexual partner. The last time he'd stayed in a hotel was in Needles. He remembered the way Britta had regarded him as he signed in; he'd been too tired to operate a pen, unable to recall his address, the one in Albuquerque that he was leaving behind. Perhaps it was just the nature of people who worked front desks to act skeptical and uninterested, to make clear that hospitality had its limits.

“Walking distance?” Irene said. She slid a list of restaurants across the counter. The nearest was three miles away. She put an X beside two she thought might still be open at this hour. It wasn't even late, nine o'clock, still seven on his watch, which he had not moved ahead when the pilot suggested they do so just before landing. He was sure that he would not be in Minnesota long enough to make it worth the effort of losing and then regaining time.

He was not hungry enough to do everything required to obtain food: get back into the rental car, follow a map, enter a restaurant filled with people, some of whom he would need to interact with in order to procure a meal. Instead, he took his suitcase to his room and set it on the bed, sat down next to it, stood up and paced, and sat again. It was then that he had called Gloria's number, but when he finished talking to her, he still felt restless. He knew this had to do with the flight,
on which he had occupied a window seat for four hours, his knees pressing hard against the seat in front of him. Despite his long legs, he always requested the window. He had come to flying as an adult and hated it, hated especially the moment when the plane veered onto the runway and he could see the long expanse of tarmac before him. The engines revved, the plane lurched forward, faster and faster, while he considered the sheer impossibility of it all. Walter, by contrast, got on a plane, took out a book, and began to read, as calmly as if he were in his study at home. Aaron supposed Walter's calmness should have made him calmer, but it never had. The only thing that made him calmer was staring out the window with a steady focus that kept the plane moving down the runway and into the air.

He left his room and began walking briskly up and down the hallways of the hotel. Until San Francisco, he had never lived so close to strangers. It both shocked and impressed him to know that people did not alter their behavior around the fact of this proximity. The Ngs continued to scream their discontentment day after day, night after night, despite the fact that he, a stranger, lay below them, while behind each door of this hotel, there were televisions on too loud, children crying, even a dog barking. He did not understand people who traveled with dogs. As he paced, he heard other sounds, private sounds: gas being passed, a man saying, “I'm ashamed to even know you,” people moaning. In room 208, a woman panted the word
bigger
over and over in a rhythmic, unsettling way. It seemed an impossible demand.

On the landing between the second and third floors he discovered a vending machine. There was nothing in it that he wanted, but he bought two bags of pretzels, a bag of M&M'S, and Cheetos. Back in his room, he emptied everything into the ice tub and began to eat, going from the salty pretzels to the chocolate to the chemical flavor of the Cheetos. Finally, he washed the orange Cheetos powder from his hands and picked up the telephone again, dialing from memory. It was almost eleven, but he knew Winnie would be awake, stretched out on her
gerebog,
a coffinlike, wheeled rice chest from Java. It had taken four large Samoan men to get it into her living room. When they set it down, they were coated with sweat and collapsed onto it, filled with
admiration for its solidness. At night after everyone went to bed, even the dog, Winnie lay atop the
gerebog
reading, for though she loved Thomas and her boys deeply, she said that part of maintaining that love was knowing to end her day alone.

Aaron listened to the phone ringing, imagined her resting her book across her stomach as she reached for it. Then, “Hello,” she said, right into his ear. She sounded tired, and he wanted to hang up, understanding his own selfishness. She said hello again, and when he still did not reply, she said, “Aaron, is that you?”

“Winnie,” he said. “I'm here. I'm in Minnesota.” And he began to sob.

*  *  *

It was Gloria who asked him to stay for supper. His mother had gone out to feed the animals, the three dogs as well as the geese and chickens they still kept. They had gotten rid of everything else, Gloria said. It was too much work for a couple of old spinsters. He had not offered to help his mother. He needed a few minutes away from her. He asked Gloria what he could do to assist her with the meal, but she said she had her own way of doing things in the kitchen and did not really know how to factor another person into it, so he stood awkwardly off to the side watching her.