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"[...] We were on this little dirt road and it was hot and dusty? We kept going and came to that old house, and you asked if we could have a drink of water? Can you imagine us doing that now? Going up to a house and asking for a drink of water?"
"Those old people must be dead now," she goes, "side by side out there in some cemetery. [...] I thought we'd be like that too when we got old enough. Dignified. And in a place. And people would come to our door."
I can't say anything just yet. Then I go, "Holly, these things, we'll look back on them too. We'll go, 'Remember the motel with all the crud in the pool?'" I go, "You see what I'm saying, Holly?"
But Holly just sits there on the bed with her glass.
I can see she doesn't know.
Why not someone else? Why not those people tonight? Why not all those people who sail through life free as birds? Why not them instead of Edith?
He moved away from the bedroom door. He thought about going for a walk. But the wind was wild now, and he could hear the branches whining in the birch tree behind the house.
He sat in front of the TV again. But he did not turn it on. He smoked and thought of that sauntering, arrogant gait as the two of them moved just ahead. If only they knew. If only someone would tell them. Just once!
He closed his eyes. He would get up early and fix breakfast. He would go with her to see Crawford. If only they had to sit with him in the waiting room! He'd tell them what to expect! He'd set those floozies straight! He'd tell them what was waiting for you after the denim and the earrings, after touching each other and cheating at games.
everyone struggles tho
(the old couple at bingo night)
She would have it, this baby. She grabbed for the baby's other arm. She caught the baby around the wrist and leaned back.
But he would not let go. He felt the baby slipping out of his hands and he pulled back very hard.
In this manner, the issue was decided.
damn
[...] we could see a garden with green things the size of baseballs hanging from the vines.
"What's that?" I said.
"How should I know?" she said. "Squash, maybe. I don't have a clue."
"Hey, Fran," I said. "Take it easy."
She didn't say anything. She drew in her lower lip and let it go. She turned off the radio as we got close to the house.
noted for the emotion (petulance, tension) communicated solely through dialogue, not adjectives
After a time, Olla came back with it. I looked at the baby and drew a breath. Olla sat down at the table with the baby. She held it up under it arms so it could stand on her lap and face us. She looked at Fran and then at me. She wasn't blushing now. She waited for one of us to comment.
"Ah!" said Fran.
"What is it?" Olla said quickly.
"Nothing," Fran said. "I thought I saw something at the window. I thought I saw a bat."
"We don't have any bats around here," Olla said.
"Maybe it was a moth," Fran said. "It was something. Well," she said, "isn't that some baby."
obviously ugly baby
Olla watched Fran with the baby. She said, "When Harold's grandpa was sixteen years old, he set out to read the encyclopedia from A to Z. He did it, too. He finished when he was twenty. Just before he met my mama."
"Where's he now?" I asked. "What's he do?" I wanted to know what had become of a man who'd set himself a goal like that.
"He'd dead," Olla said. [...]
It was an ugly baby. But, for all I know, I guess it didn't matter that much to Bud and Olla. Or if it did, maybe they simply thought, So okay if it's ugly. It's our baby. And this is just a stage. Pretty soon there'll be another stage. There is this stage and then there is the next stage. Things will be okay in the long run, once all the stages have been gone through. They might have thought something like that.
this hits me really hard for some reason
Later, after things had changed for us, and the kid had come along, all of that, Fran would look back on that evening at Bud's place as the beginning of the change. But she's wrong. The change came later - and when it came, it was like something that happened to other people, not something that could have happened to us.
[...]
Fran doesn't work at the creamery anymore, and she cut her hair a long time ago. She's gotten fat on me, too. We don't talk about it. What's to say?
“Let me say how sorry I am,” the baker said, putting his elbows on the table. “God alone knows how sorry. Listen to me. I’m just a baker. I don’t claim to be anything else. Maybe once, maybe years ago, I was a different kind of human being. I’ve forgotten, I don’t know for sure. But I’m not any longer, if I ever was. Now I’m just a baker. That don’t excuse my doing what I did, I know. But I’m deeply sorry. I’m sorry for your son, and sorry for my part in this,” the baker said. He spread his hands out on the table and turned them over to reveal his palms. “I don’t have any children myself, so I can only imagine what you must be feeling. All I can say to you now is that I’m sorry. Forgive me, if you can,” the baker said. “I’m not an evil man, I don’t think. Not evil, like you said on the phone. You got to understand what it comes down to is I don’t know how to act anymore, it would seem. Please,” the man said, “let me ask you if you can find it in your hearts to forgive me?”
It was warm inside the bakery. Howard stood up from the table and took off his coat. He helped Ann from her coat. The baker looked at them for a minute and then nodded and got up from the table. He went to the oven and turned off some switches. He found cups and poured coffee from an electric coffee-maker. He put a carton of cream on the table, and a bowl of sugar.
“You probably need to eat something,” the baker said. “I hope you’ll eat some of my hot rolls. You have to eat and keep going. Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this,” he said.
He served them warm cinnamon rolls just out of the oven, the icing still runny. He put butter on the table and knives to spread the butter. Then the baker sat down at the table with them. He waited. He waited until they each took a roll from the platter and began to eat. “It’s good to eat something,” he said, watching them. “There’s more. Eat up. Eat all you want. There’s all the rolls in the world in here.”
They ate rolls and drank coffee. Ann was suddenly hungry, and the rolls were warm and sweet. She ate three of them, which pleased the baker. Then he began to talk. They listened carefully. Although they were tired and in anguish, they listened to what the baker had to say. They nodded when the baker began to speak of loneliness, and of the sense of doubt and limitation that had come to him in his middle years. He told them what it was like to be childless all these years. To repeat the days with the ovens endlessly full and endlessly empty. The party food, the celebrations he’d worked over Icing knuckle-deep. The tiny wedding couples stuck into cakes. Hundreds of them, no, thousands by now. Birthdays. Just imagine all those candles burning. He had a necessary trade. He was a baker. He was glad he wasn’t a florist. It was better to be feeding people. This was a better smell anytime than flowers.
a different ending to the story about the boy & his birthday cake
think about this in the context of: the baker just wanting to make ends meet, versus rebelling against the alienation of his labour and instead embracing his connections with other people
Patti said, 'Vitamins.' She picked up her glass and swirled the ice. 'For shit sake! I mean, when I was a girl this is the last thing I ever saw myself doing. Jesus, I never thought I'd grow up to sell vitamins. Door-to-door vitamins. This beats everything. This blows my mind.'
'I never thought so either, honey,' I said.
'That's right,' she said. 'You said it in a nutshell.'
'Honey.'
'Don't honey me,' she said. 'This is hard, brother. This life is not easy, any way you cut it.'