After the Parade

by Lori Ostlund

  “Yes, I’m okay,” she said, “but my husband is dead.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that, Mrs. Thompson,” he said. “How did he die?”

  “I can’t tell,” she said. “He was watching the set when I went out to the garden to pull up some weeds.”

  It registered then that her husband had just died, was lying before her dead even as they spoke. “You need to call an ambulance,” he said, looking frantically at his script.

  “I called them,” she said. At that very moment an ambulance passed by the campaign headquarters on Tenth Street where he sat making calls, and he felt overwhelmed by the small ways that his life was attaching itself to this stranger’s.

  “What were you calling about, young man?” Sadie Thompson asked, and so he explained his mission, referring to the script as he spoke.

  “Bob’s a Republican,” she said when he had finished, dropping her voice in deference to years of discussing her husband in muted tones. “I’m a Democrat, but we try not to fight about it. We just take turns voting. One year I go in, and the next year he goes, because otherwise what good is it? We’d just be canceling each other out.”

  Aaron wanted to explain that that was the whole point of voting, that an election was nothing more than a grand process of canceling one another out, but he did not have the heart to point out that the system she and her husband had utilized all these years lacked logic. He stayed with her on the line until he heard the sirens outside her house, and then he said, “I’m very sorry about your husband, Mrs. Thompson” and hung up.

  That night at dinner, he told Walter the story. “I’m a stranger,” he said at the end. “What right did I have to intrude like that when her husband was lying there dead?”

  He was being intentionally dramatic, but Walter responded calmly. “Think of how she was feeling at that moment, sitting there with him. She was probably happy that you called. After all, she picked up the phone.”

  “She didn’t pick it up thinking it was me,” said Aaron. “She probably answered because she always answers the phone. Or maybe she thought it was the hospital calling or the police or their children.”

  “Or maybe she just needed to hear a voice,” Walter said, in the soothing voice that made students and friends turn to him for advice and comfort, the voice that had had that effect on Aaron also, until one day it no longer did.

  * * *

  Aaron picked up on the fifth ring. “Hello,” he said.

  “Aaron?”

  “Winnie?” He noted the time, 5:09, which meant 7:09 in Minnesota, far too early for Winnie to be up. “Is everything okay?” he asked. “You? The kids? Thomas?” and then, “Walter?”

  She said his name again, sounding at once happy and sad. He had always loved her ability to evoke contrasting emotions and make them seem valid and compatible. “Everyone’s fine,” she said. “We’re fine. Walter’s fine.” She paused as though expecting him to respond, but when he did not, she said, “He misses you. We all do.”

  “I miss you,” he said. “But I like it here,” and then, “I’m in San Francisco.”

  “I know. Walter told me.” Winnie giggled. “My god, Aaron. All those gay people—it must be driving you crazy.” They both laughed. “Happy birthday,” she said and began to sing a raucous, operatic version of the song, attempting to conceal her terrible voice.

  He pressed the telephone to his ear and covered the receiver with his hand because he did not want her to hear his sniffling. “Thank you,” he said when she was done. “And thank you for calling. It’s the best birthday present ever.” He was embarrassed by how trite this sounded, how inadequate, and so he said her name again, whinnying it like a horse, “W-w-winnie,” their old joke.

  “He’s miserable,” Winnie said quietly.

  “I’m sorry,” Aaron said.

  “Don’t be sorry. He’s difficult, my brother. Nobody knows that except us because he’s only difficult with the people he loves, and we’re it, Aaron. We are the only two people in the world he truly loves. You know that, right?”

  He did know, though did not know how to respond to having it stated.

  “Are you teaching?” Winnie asked.

  “Of course,” he said. “You know I love teaching. Besides, I have no other skills.”

  “That is not true,” Winnie said sternly. “You’re logical and well read, and, most important, you’re the kindest person I know.”

  Aaron hid his pleasure with a laugh. “You’ve just hit on the most sought-after qualities in any job market. In fact, I was just reading a job description when you called.” He cleared his throat. “Wanted: logical, well-read, kind person for six-figure position.” She laughed, and he said, “Anyway, enough about me. How’s business?”

  “I just got back from my spring trip to Korea. That’s why I’m up at this ridiculous hour—jet lag.” Most mornings, Winnie rose at 8:52, which allowed her just enough time to drink one cup of coffee, shower, and drive across town in order to open at ten o’clock. “I’ve been awake since four,” she said. “You know what I was thinking about? That time the three of us stopped in Hong Kong on our way back from Bali, and we stayed in that little hotel with the poster taped up in the foyer: Seeking hairy Caucasian men. Remember?”

  “How could I possibly forget?” he said. “I spent half our stay trying to talk Walter into responding.”

  “Because you couldn’t bear not knowing what they needed hairy white men for. Also, that was a rhetorical ‘remember,’ ” she said. “Oh, and remember—rhetorical again—that short couple from San Francisco we kept ending up on the elevator with? Every time we got on, there they were, dressed in matching outfits and grinning.”

  “Panama hats. White linen shirts with khaki pants.”

  “You forgot the matching fanny packs,” Winnie said. “The first thing they said to us was ‘you might want to exchange those purses and wallets for fanny packs. We’re not in Kansas anymore.’ They laughed hysterically, and when we didn’t laugh back, they said, ‘That’s from The Wizard of Oz,’ as though we weren’t laughing because we’d missed the allusion, to which you replied, lying earnestly, ‘I’ve never seen the film. My mother forbade all sorcery-themed cinema.’ ”

  “Walter was so mad at me.”

  “At both of us,” Winnie said. “He always thought I encouraged you.”

  “Which you did. Remember how he walked way ahead of us all the way to breakfast, and then he refused to eat anything? I don’t know why he always thought that he was somehow punishing us by refusing to eat.”

  “That place had the best congee,” Winnie said. “Oh, and when we got back to the hotel that afternoon, they were on the elevator again. ‘I’m afraid we didn’t introduce ourselves this morning,’ the woman said. ‘This is Robert.’ And he said, ‘This is Roberta,’ and in unison they said, ‘We’re from San Francisco, the city by the bay.’ Then Walter introduced the three of us, and when they pieced together that I was his sister, not his wife, and that you and Walter lived in Albuquerque, together, the husband said, ‘We just love gay people, being from Frisco and all.’ And you said—”

  Aaron groaned. “I said, ‘Yes, they’re adorable, aren’t they?’ You know I only say things like that when you’re around. I felt awful about it later because they were nice people, Robert and Roberta. They meant well, and I’d much rather deal with people who’re maybe a little awkward about their good intentions than with those who lack good intentions altogether.”

  Winnie was still laughing—except, he realized, she was not. She was sobbing, the two sounds so similar that, on the telephone, there was almost no way to tell them apart, but he could because he knew Winnie, knew that when she laughed, she gave herself up to it completely, but when she cried, she was always fighting to stop.

  “I’m sorry, Winnie,” he said, which could mean sorry he had left Walter or sorry he had not told her he was going or sorry he had made her cry; he meant all three. They had always ended telephone conversations
the same way, with one of them saying, “Chow mein,” a small joke at the expense of Walter, who ended all conversations with ciao. Aaron waited for Winnie to say it, but the line was dead.

  * * *

  By six fifteen, Aaron stood in the driveway, finger on the garage door opener, watching the door make its slow, stubborn descent. It took nineteen seconds—he had timed it—which meant that he spent an hour each month waiting for the door to open and close. Once, when he was already running late, it had rolled off its tracks. He’d considered leaving it like that, halfway down, and going off to work. He would have, but he knew that the Ngs would terminate his lease, so he knocked on their door, and Mrs. Ng, whom he rarely saw but whose angry voice he knew well, came out with a hammer and screwdriver and expertly maneuvered it back on track.

  It had rained throughout the night. He heard the thwomp of sneakers on wet pavement behind him and turned with his finger still on the control, expecting the elderly Chinese woman who walked her portly Pekingese in her robe, but it was a white woman with a Saran Wrap–like scarf binding her hair.

  “I found you,” the woman called out cheerfully as she stepped toward him and raised a gun. She looked just like his mother, or rather, what he imagined his mother must look like now. Behind him, the garage door jerked up and down like a beast in its death throes, but he could not let go of the button, could not stop thinking, My mother hates guns, as if a person could disappear for twenty-four years yet stay the same.

  “I’ve been waiting all night, you rascal,” she said, her finger moving against the trigger.

  A stream of water hit his tie, the tie Walter had given him, and splashed his neck. It was cold, and he was alive, and the woman was not his mother. He gasped.

  “I got you,” she cried out as the garage door bounced once more before the opener slipped from his hand and broke open on the pavement. Aaron fell to his knees. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  He looked up at the woman towering over him who had stepped out of the mist and shot him with a water pistol—a deadly looking water pistol—on his birthday. He saw now that she resembled his mother in only the most superficial of ways, a fleeting impression suggested by height and age and big bones. Her name, he learned later, was Agnes Nyquist. She was sixty-six, his mother’s age, and had moved to San Francisco from Council Bluffs, Iowa, when she was thirty-four. But before he knew any of this, she was a woman offering him her hand, saying, “Dustin, let me help you up.”

  “My name is Aaron,” he said. “Aaron Englund.”

  “No,” she said, insisting. “You’re Dustin. It took me two days to find you. You’re my next target.” She reached into her purse and brought out a photo of a man who was tall and thin. His hair was blond, and he was holding a small dog.

  “That’s not me,” said Aaron. “I don’t even like dogs.”

  “Oh dear,” said the woman. She compared Aaron to the man in the photograph and seemed to accept that it was not him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m trying to win the prize.”

  “What prize?” he asked gently.

  “I’m competing in StreetWars,” she said. “I’m one of the last assassins alive, but this really puts me behind.”

  “Perhaps you can explain StreetWars to me,” he said. “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “It’s simple,” she said. “Everyone’s an assassin. We’re given the name and photo of another assassin, and we need to hunt him down and shoot him with one of these.” She held up her water pistol. “The problem is that someone else is trying to get us at the same time.” She looked over her shoulder and back at him. “Actually, we’re not part of the official StreetWars. We’re a renegade group. A lot of us are retired or don’t work regular jobs, so we’ve got all day to track each other. We don’t give out addresses, so there’s more research involved. And we make our own pot.”

  “Pot?” He pictured a band of unemployed and elderly stoners running amok in the city with squirt guns, but he found the image hard to reconcile with this woman standing in front of him, her Saran Wrap–like scarf still snugly in place.

  “Winner takes all,” she said.

  “Ah. That kind of pot. How much are you playing for?”

  She lowered her voice. “There were a hundred of us when we started, and we each put in $500, so that’s—”

  “That’s $50,000,” Aaron said.

  “Yup,” Agnes said. “And there are just eight of us left.” She turned and looked behind her again, checking to see that she was not being followed. “I don’t suppose I could use your facilities?” she said.

  “What? My bathroom?” he said. “I guess that’s fine. I don’t usually have guests.”

  “I’m not really a guest,” she said.

  He bent and gathered the parts of the opener, snapped it back together, and was relieved to find that it worked. They did not speak during the nineteen seconds it took for the door to open. When they entered his studio, he showed her the bathroom and then banged around in the kitchen because he did not like to hear people urinating. She came out humming and thanked him. She had removed the scarf.

  “I don’t suppose you have any tea handy,” she said.

  “Handy?” he said. “No. I was actually on my way to work when you shot me.”

  “Coffee?” she asked hopefully. “It’s a little hard on my stomach, but I’m usually fine if I mix it with lots of milk.”

  He looked at his watch. Assuming he took the bus and there were no delays, he had forty-five minutes before he had to leave. He began grinding coffee. While it brewed he prepared a plate of toast because it was the only thing he had that felt breakfastlike, but when he turned back around, Agnes Nyquist was asleep on his bed. He sat down on his only chair and thought about how exhausted she must be to fall asleep in a stranger’s home. Then he thought about how he was forty-two years old, an age he had never seen his mother reach because she had left at forty-one. He did not even know whether she had reached forty-two, but he did not want to think about that on his birthday.

  Instead, he called Marla to say that he would be late. He did not tell her why because he did not want her gossiping about it and because already the events in the driveway seemed absurd, almost slapstick, an effect that Agnes Nyquist’s snoring presence underscored. As they were hanging up, Marla called out, “Wait. Will you be here by lunch?” and he said he thought so. He knew what her question was about. Marla had all their birthdays on file and was planning a lunch “surprise” party, at which he would be given a melting ice cream cake with blue and yellow frosting. He disliked both ice cream and frosting and always passed on the cakes, though he doubted that Marla noticed. She was fulfilling her notion of being a good boss and her love of ice cream. She was having her cake and eating it too.

  21

  * * *

  “We were worried,” said Katya when he finally arrived, which Aaron knew was their way of asking why he was late, but he said only, “No need to worry about me.” What had happened in his driveway was not the sort of thing one told students. The fact of him alive in front of them, the victim of nothing more than a shot of cold water, would not alter the more compelling revelation of there having been a gun. Already, they believed that Americans carried guns as casually as everyone else carried cell phones. A week earlier, Bolor had quit her cleaning job after she found a pistol lying on the foyer table next to a stack of outgoing mail. The students had been shocked by her story, but Aaron said nothing, not knowing how to explain that it struck him as at once startling and mundane.

  In Mortonville, nearly everyone had owned a gun. The guns were mainly for hunting, which meant that the men at the café talked about gun legislation as though the government wished to control their very right to eat. Occasionally, one of the young couples from the Twin Cities who kept a summer lake cabin nearby would get involved in the discussion, inserting statistics about gun violence or gangs, these arguments laying bare the divide between urban and rural. Most of the farmers would stir their coffee and
keep quiet because they did not like to argue, but Harold Bildt would turn to the city folks and say something about his right to protect himself from the dangers that they had created in the city. Harold sold rifles at the hardware store, and sometimes, when Aaron’s mother set his food in front of him, he would say, “I got new stock in. You should come over and pick one out.”

  “I appreciate the concern, Harold,” his mother would reply, “but I wouldn’t know what to do with a gun.”

  His mother always walked away when the conversation turned to guns because she said it made no sense to argue with Harold about them. “He’s not going to change his mind, and I’m not going to change mine. In the meantime, we’ve got to keep being neighbors.” Aaron knew his mother was right. There was a fine balance involved in living peacefully with people with whom you did not agree, and nothing changed the fact that Harold Bildt had been a good neighbor. If an appliance was acting up, he came over and fixed it right away. He let them run a tab, and early on when they could not make payments every month, he did not constantly bring it up as a way of keeping them grateful.

  “You don’t need to do anything with it,” Harold called after her. “You just have it around in case someone gets funny ideas about how much money a place like this keeps in the till overnight.”

  “If someone wants the little I’ve got in the till that bad that they’d break in here for it, then they can have it. I’m not coming down to stop them.”

  * * *

  That afternoon at the hippie café, Aaron told Bill what had happened in his driveway because he knew that Bill would not get so focused on the gun that he would be unable to listen to the rest of the story. When he got to the part about how he had turned around to find Agnes Nyquist asleep on his bed, Bill laughed. “What did you do?” he asked.

  “I waited for her to wake up. What else could I do?”