by Lori Ostlund
“What do your friends call you?” she asked. “Harry?”
He did not tell her that he had no friends. “No, I don’t really care for diminutives,” he said instead.
She laughed. “Well. Now I can certainly see why they chose Harold.”
He smiled shyly then and offered to make her iced tea.
“Groovy,” she said. “I like a man who can cook,” and when he explained that iced tea did not actually involve cooking, she laughed her throaty, pleasant laugh yet again.
Eventually, Harold understood that his mother called his aunt more frequently because she and his father argued more frequently, their arguments sometimes taking root right in front of him but over things so small that he did not understand how they had been able to make arguments out of them. Thanksgiving was a perfect example. As the turkey cooked, his parents sat together in the kitchen drinking wine and chatting, their faces growing flushed from the heat and the alcohol, and when everything was ready, his father seated his mother and then placed the turkey in front of her with a flourish.
“Le turkey, Madame,” he declared, pronouncing turkey as though it were French.
His mother giggled and picked up the carving knife. “Harold, what part would you like?” she asked.
“White meat, please.”
“I’ll give you breast meat,” his mother said, adding with a small chuckle, “God knows your father has no interest in breast.”
For the rest of the meal, Harold’s father spoke only to Harold, asking him for the gravy when it actually sat in front of his mother. His mother was also silent, and when the meal was nearly over, she dumped the last of the cranberries onto Harold’s plate even though all three of them knew that cranberries were his father’s favorite part of Thanksgiving. Later, as Harold sat reading in his room, he heard his parents yelling, and he crept down the hallway and perched at the top of the stairs, letting their voices funnel up to him.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” his father shouted.
“Come on, Charles. Lighten up.” Harold heard a small catch in his mother’s voice, which meant she wanted to laugh. “He thought I was talking about the turkey breast.” She paused. “Which, of course, I was.”
There were five words that were forbidden in their household, words that, according to his father, were not only profane but aesthetically unappealing. Harold heard his father say one of these words to his mother, his voice becoming low and precise as it did when he was very angry. His mother did not reply, and a moment later, Harold heard his father open the front door and leave.
When his mother came to tuck him in, her eyes red from crying, he asked where his father had gone. “To the pool hall,” she said, which made her start crying again because this was an old joke between them. When his father occasionally disappeared after dinner, slipping out unannounced, Harold’s mother always said, “I guess he’s gone to the pool hall.” She had explained to Harold what a pool hall was, and they both laughed at the notion of his neat, serious father in such a place, there among men who smoked cigars and sweated and made bets with their hard-earned money.
The Bigness of the World
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© DENNIS HEARNE
LORI OSTLUND’s collection of stories, The Bigness of the World, received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the California Book Award for First Fiction, and the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. It was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and was named a Notable Book by The Story Prize. Her stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, among other places. In 2009, Lori received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. She lives in San Francisco.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Lori Ostlund
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First Scribner hardcover edition September 2015
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-4767-9010-7
ISBN 978-1-4767-9012-1 (ebook)